49 Years Later, 3 Survivors Relive the Bombing of Pearl Harbor

It is a memory Ira Schab has carried with him for 49 years. Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. He was getting ready for church service aboard the USS Dobbin when the harbor erupted.

“We heard this huge explosion and we snapped into action,” Schab of Ventura said. As Schab and his shipmates arrived on deck to see what had happened, the USS Arizona--400 yards away--was sinking.

“A bomb went down one of her stacks and fire shot up like a needle,” Schab said. “ ‘Oh, good heavens,’ I thought, ‘there she goes.’ It was a horrible, fatalistic feeling. I thought we were next.”

But Schab survived to tell the tale of the day the Japanese attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet, killing 2,400 Americans in a surprise air raid.

Although Pearl Harbor Day passed yesterday with little observance in Ventura County, old memories were relived over lunchtime conversations or passing discussion with friends and family.

Schab, 70, is one of about 30 Pearl Harbor survivors living in the county. He belongs to the Channel Islands Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn., which has 90 members in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

He tries to play down that he survived the attack. He says it’s no big deal. But he quietly concedes that he is proud.

“It was phenomenal,” said Schab, who works as an engineer for General Electric. “There was a kaleidoscope of things happening. Even today it’s hard to put into sequence.”

Schab said he moved quickly to help his shipmates set up machine guns on the deck of the destroyer tender, which was not equipped for battle.

“We wiped out a few (of the attacking planes) with the machine guns,” Schab said. “The fear was hard to describe. I just prayed that they wouldn’t hit us. We were just slightly prepared.”

Cleve Cratch, another survivor who lives in Ventura, said he keeps a piece of a Japanese airplane as a reminder of the attack.

Cratch said he had spent the night in Honolulu and was awakened by the explosions.

“We knew the war was coming with Japan,” Cratch, 74, said. “We knew it was inevitable.”

But the attack was a surprise.

Cratch said he caught a cab and hurried back to the harbor, where he joined his shipmates on the USS Madusa.

“It was terrible,” Cratch said. “All around us ships were smoking. There was a terrible amount of oil burning.”

The USS Madusa survived the attack. And after the smoke cleared, Cratch said he went aboard the USS West Virginia to search for survivors.

“There was a hole in the side so big you could drive a Mack truck through it,” Cratch said. “There were bones and skulls everywhere. It was very terrible.”

Carl Burkert, a Port Hueneme resident who was aboard the USS Whitney, said he feared he would die in the raid.

“I woke up to a lot of noise: explosions, airplanes flying overhead, guns firing,” Burkert said. “It took me a few minutes to realize what was going on.”

Burkert, 73, said he rushed to the deck. “There were battleships getting hit and burning,” he said. “I didn’t have time to think.”

Burkert said he grabbed a machine gun and started shooting.

“The planes kept coming and we kept shooting,” he said. “Finally, all the planes were gone and we had time to look around. There were a lot of fires and a lot of ships sinking. I knew a lot of people who had been killed and I felt lucky to be alive.”

The three survivors say they hope to go back to Pearl Harbor next year for the 50th anniversary of the attack. The Channel Islands group is planning the trip.

“It’s important to remember what has happened,” Burkert said. “It makes us aware that we don’t want it to happen again.”