Midlands witnesses to history

Lin Burleigh

Council Bluffs native Lin Burleigh was talking with a fellow sailor when they heard loud booms on Dec. 7, 1941.

Burleigh, now 88, thought it was a battery salute: 21 guns firing to honor ships passing outside Pearl Harbor. Then he heard someone screaming that the Japanese were bombing the ships docked in the harbor. Burleigh was right next to the action — on the third deck of the USS Pennsylvania, dry-docked near the harbor.

He hurried to his battle station. About the time he got to the gun mount, the ship had lost power. For the next couple of hours, in the dark, he hoisted 5-inch ammunition shells to the guns in the dusty, smoky, sweltering ship. He remembers seeing the wounded brought below deck.

“One Marine's leg was practically blown off,” Burleigh said.

After the Japanese planes flew away, Burleigh got his first view of the carnage. Ships burned. Some were overturned. Others had sunk.

Burleigh was worried about one ship in particular: the USS Oklahoma. A fellow Council Bluffs native, Bert McKeenan, was on the boat. Burleigh was going to meet McKeenan, a friend of his family's, later that day in Honolulu. They never met. The Oklahoma had been destroyed. McKeenan's body was never found.

“He was probably just blown all to pieces,” Burleigh said. “The Oklahoma was such an easy target.”

The USS Pennsylvania had suffered damage but was repaired and sailed with Burleigh aboard through the Pacific. He went to the Aleutian Islands, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa and other spots.

Nearly 70 years later, the Council Bluffs resident hopes Pearl Harbor serves as a reminder that the nation has to be prepared for attacks. And he thinks the two current U.S. wars are a big part of that.

“Either they're going to win over there or we're going to have terrorist attacks in this country that make 9/11 look like nothing,” Burleigh said. “I think it's good that more troops are going to Afghanistan. It's a war we have to win.”

Earl Brandes

The Nebraskan had just finished breakfast at a Marine base about a half mile from Pearl Harbor when he heard a commotion.

Earl Brandes, now 88 and living in Central City, Neb., walked outside and heard explosions through thick smoke in the harbor. Then he saw a plane flying low. He saw the red circle signifying the Japanese rising sun.

With his weapon locked up yards away, Brandes just watched.

After the first wave of attacks, he finally got his gun — but the rifle did little when the second wave of planes flew by. When a U.S. destroyer ship in the nearby dry docks exploded, Brandes ran for cover.

When the planes left and the smoke cleared, Brandes was shocked by what he saw.

“I had no idea we were being beat like we were,” he said. “We lost all our planes. All our battleships were damaged. It was really a catastrophe.”

After Pearl Harbor, Brandes returned to train in the continental United States before heading back to the South Pacific. He was in charge of a fleet of Marine supply trucks and also spent time in Guadalcanal, Guam and Iwo Jima. He returned to Nebraska and farmed near Central City.

He keeps up on the current wars but sees them as far different from World War II. There is one similarity: The United States should not be pushed around, he said. He wants the United States to send a clear message to terrorists and the countries that harbor them, but he's not sure how exactly to do that. He does have one tip for the president, though.

“Give 'em hell, Obama.”

Erven Rasmussen

Erven Rasmussen was eating breakfast inside the USS California when a ship chaplain came running through the room.

“It's the real thing, boys,” the pastor yelled.

Rasmussen, now 94, looked out the battleship's porthole in time to see barracks explode on a nearby island. “Then all hell broke loose,” he said.

All 1,500 sailors on the ship scrambled for their battle stations. Rasmussen, a machinist, was assigned to the engine room deep in the bowels of the vessel. By the time he got there, the ship had lost power. It was hot and dark.

Every time a bomb struck the California, the whole ship shuddered. The Japanese eventually pierced the ship's oil tanks. Water flooded parts of the hull, drowning about 300 sailors.

After Rasmussen had worked close to two hours in the engine room, the ship's captain called for an evacuation. Rasmussen contemplated jumping into the water, but fuel seeping from the ship had caught fire and the surface was aflame. A boat eventually came by and Rasmussen leapt to it.

During the next few days, the California slowly sank into the harbor, eventually sinking into the mud and resting upright. Huge cranes hoisted it out months later. It was rebuilt and sailed again later in the war.

Rasmussen was assigned to a boat that supported pontoon reconnaissance planes. He sailed throughout the South Pacific before becoming a naval instructor in Bremerton, Wash., for the last 18 months of World War II.

The Underwood, Iowa, native moved to Council Bluffs afterward, eventually starting his own business, Rasmussen Mechanical.

He rarely thinks of his time in Pearl Harbor.

“I don't regret the experience,” he said, “but I wouldn't want to do it again.”

Rasmussen sees similarities between the country's response to Pearl Harbor and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In both instances, he thinks the attackers deserve to be defeated. He hopes U.S. troops finish the job in Afghanistan especially.

“We have to whip 'em,” he said. “Otherwise all the lives we lost were for nothing.”

— Dane Stickney

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