The world changed mere feet from Ed Guthrie 68 years ago today.
He was reading a comic book while sitting on the deck of a Navy repair ship docked at Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes snapped him to attention. He watched as they bombed battleships. The planes flew so low that Guthrie could see smiles on the faces of the Japanese pilots. The 91-year-old Omaha resident still remembers the red scarves they wore.
Within minutes, he was in a boat navigating through water turned black with leaking fuel from sinking ships. He and others were pulling bodies from the water — some dead, some alive. As he worked, a second wave of Japanese fighters buzzed by, dropping bombs and torpedoes.
“The water just erupted with explosions,” he said.
The way Guthrie sees it, in some ways, those eruptions haven't ended.
Pearl Harbor, he says, broke a peaceful lull in U.S. history and turned the country into a warring global power. Pearl Harbor pushed America deep into World War II. Ever since, U.S. troops have been stationed around the globe. They've fought in Korea and Vietnam. They escalated arms to match the Russians. They've fought in the Middle East three times since 1991.
The Guthrie family has been right in the middle of it all. After Pearl Harbor, Guthrie served in the Pacific Theater, preparing boats for island invasions. His son, Jim Guthrie, and son-in-law, Paul Murphy, fought in Vietnam. One grandson, Adam Staebell, served in the Marines in Bosnia. Another grandson, Ryan Edward Guthrie, serves in the Army and is stationed in Iraq.
“Ever since Pearl Harbor, we've been in some kind of war,” said Guthrie, the only Omaha member of the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. “It's just not good.”
Guthrie isn't happy with President Barack Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan. He sees the wars in the Middle East as drastically different from the one he fought in nearly 70 years ago.
“Today, (the soldiers) don't know who their enemy is,” Guthrie said. “You can't tell a civilian from a terrorist. We knew exactly who we were fighting in the Pacific.”
Guthrie also fears that oil interests and tangled U.S. relations in the Middle East complicate wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He'd like for his grandson to get out of there. He'd like to see the country get back to more peaceful days.
Peaceful is how Guthrie describes the morning hours of Dec. 7, 1941. He had worked a night shift on the USS Whitney, monitoring electric equipment used to power destroyers while they were repaired. About 7:30 a.m., Guthrie decided to unwind by reading. Other soldiers were either attending church or sleeping in after having some Saturday night fun.
As he read, Guthrie heard the buzzing of propellers. Then he saw planes approaching. At first, he thought they were American planes, dropping sandbags as target practice. Then he heard the explosions and saw the Japanese pilots whiz close by.
“I didn't have time to run for cover,” he said. “It just happened so quickly.”
A nearby destroyer opened fire on the airplanes. Their shots boomed through the harbor. The USS Arizona, which took a fatal hit through its smokestack, was docked little more than a city block away from Guthrie's ship.
As the first wave of Japanese fighters passed, a duty officer ordered Guthrie and other sailors into a boat that held roughly 40. They trawled the water looking for bodies. It wasn't easy.
“The water was black, and I mean black,” he said. “All of that fuel oil had just spilled into the water. We had trouble finding the bodies in the water, it was so black.”
Guthrie still has a $5 bill he fished from the water. It's more brown than green.
As the Americans worked, a second wave of Japanese fighters flew over. Bombs seemed to drop everywhere. Guthrie worried that his boat might get it, but the Japanese had grander ideas: battleships, aircraft carriers. They wanted to damage marquee battleships, and they did.
“Boy, that second wave did a whole lot of damage.”
Guthrie and his fellow sailors kept looking for bodies and ferrying them to a hospital boat.
After days of that, Guthrie prepared to set sail for the South Pacific. He helped stage invasions of the Philippines, Guam and many other islands in the area. He ended his six years in the Navy in 1946 and worked as an electrician in his hometown, Omaha, for years afterward.
He stayed involved with the Pearl Harbor survivors group, meeting with other Nebraska survivors once a year in Grand Island. At times, 50 men would show up. This year, only seven were there. Widows far outnumbered survivors.
He doesn't think about Dec. 7, 1941, too often — just when someone asks or if he sees a picture. The sounds of those bombs, the rocking of the waves and the memories of his battleship buddies who died all come racing back. But, frankly, it's not something Guthrie likes to remember.
“Am I proud to have been there? No, not really,” he said. “That's why I was in the Navy, to help if something like that happened.
“I'm proud to be alive.”
He hopes his grandson will be able to say the same years from now.
Contact the writer:
444-1220, dane.stickney@owh.com
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