Joe and the hushed-up horror of the ‘other’ Pearl Harbor
Now 83, he will never forget when the bombs flew out of the clouds and destroyed the docks of Bari, Italy, his beloved native city
JOE ORTALIZIO
has put 76 years between him and that day in 1943, which he has not forgotten and never will. He can still smell that day in his nostrils, hear its sounds. The mustard gas. The explosions.
He’s 83 but when he talks to me about that day, I see and hear an eight-year-old boy in his eyes and in his voice.
He was eight when the bombs flew out of the clouds and into the harbour in Bari, Italy, the beloved city of his childhood. He calls it “the unknown Pearl Harbor.”
“I was going to school,” he says, “but all of a sudden, there was an air raid.” The German Luftwaffe was delivering a parting shot, so to speak.
The Italians had, by fall 1943, flipped to the side of the Allies, who were establishing a toehold on the eastern peninsula, with Bari (an ancient coastal city atop the heel of the Italian boot) being used as an important supply base. But the enemy was not going to give up the farm without poisoning the well.
On Dec. 3, 1943, more than 100 German Junkers Ju 88 bombers bombarded the city, chiefly the old part at the centre, called Bari Vecchia (Old Bari), where the ships were harboured.
“I was less than a kilometre from the (Bari) harbour,” says Joe. That’s where he lived, where his school was. He assumes the school was being targeted, as there were British officers billeted there. “And there was a big castle, and people went underneath for shelter.” From the top, one could see the devastated harbour.
Whether the Luftwaffe was aiming for buildings, we’ll never know, but they missed the school and the castle. They hit one family’s home. They were killed.
What the Junkers did not miss was the harbour. It was a scene of utter devastation on a massive scale. Partly that’s because the Allies, buoyed by early progress in Italy, thought Bari was safe and overcrowded it with ships.
“Ships used to come in, full, from every nation.” More than 20 Allied ships were sunk.
There were bodies floating in the harbour, not just sailors but young longshoremen, he says. As a boy, you don’t forget. He ran two kilometres to where his father worked at a gas refinery.
His father said, protectively, “‘What did you come here for? You should be in school or at home.’”
One ship principally among the 20 sunk. The U.S. Liberty ship John Harvey was focal to the disaster. It contained an enormous cargo of mustard gas.
The Americans loaded it thus as a retaliatory sleeve card to be played only in case the Germans violated agreements and used chemical warfare first. But the cargo was classified. Not even the British knew. The ship shouldn’t have been carrying it. Doctors often misprescribed for the wounded, sometimes fatally, not realizing what they were dealing with.
The toll of that day was incalculable. Some say 1,000 fatalities and civilian casualties, outnumbering those at Pearl Harbor. The whole thing was kept under wraps by the Americans for decades. By now, books have been written, documentaries made, and there is Joe’s lonely voice, his haunted memory. There were good memories, too.
As a boy in war-tossed Bari, life was full of adventure. School was sporadic, and the boys would play soccer with their teachers and box in the gym. They were always finding things parachuted in and selling them.
Joe eventually apprenticed as a machinist, heard about jobs in Canada and ended up at Westinghouse. He lives at Caroline Place now where he’s visited by friend and once co-worker Nelson West.
“Joe was a brilliant machinist,” he says. He worked on a huge lathe, making rotors for turbines.
Joe still sends money to his sister Anna in Bari, who was seven months in utero when the bombing happened and has had respiratory problems her whole life.
Caroline Place volunteer Christine Brown told me about Joe and his story. “I found myself immersed in his story. He talks about going through the pearly gates, but I tell him he has lots of light in his eyes yet. He says my listening is a privilege for him. He has something important to say. He’s much more than someone just sitting in the lobby waiting for St. Peter. He knows it. And it’s a beautiful thing.”