At Pearl Harbor attack, these men fought back
Three East Bay survivors of Japanese strike retell their stories as others pay tribute
As Japanese bombs and bullets rained down on him, 17-year- old Earl “Chuck” Kohler ran out of the Ford Island office hangar, grabbed a machine gun, hopped into an aircraft and started firing at the sky
he Minnesota farm boy-turned-seaman and another sailor ignored orders to seek shelter and instead took to defending their ground amid the terror that early morning of Dec. 7, 1941.
Nearby, Michael “Mickey” Ganitch on the dry-docked USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) and Clarence Byal on the USS St. Louis (CL-39) also came under heavy fire as the Japanese swept through Oahu’s sky in a surprise attack that would leave 2,403 dead.
Ganitch, an Ohio native, was in uniform to practice for a big football game when the first wave of Japanese Zeros bore down over his battleship, while Byal mostly remembers the smoke and explosions before his light cruiser managed to reach the open sea and begin a hunt for the Japanese fleet.
Flash-forward 79 years and the trio — Ganitch and Byal, both now San Leandro residents, and Kohler, a Concord resident — will recount their experiences in a Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day program commemorating the day of infamy that would catapult the United States into World War II.
Today’s event, hosted by Save Mount Diablo, Cal State East Bay- Concord, California State Parks and the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter 5, will begin at 4:30 p.m. with a prerecorded video celebration featuring speakers from those organizations as well as the three war vets paying tribute to those who sacrificed their lives and honoring those who survived. All of the speakers except for Kohler, Ganitch and Byal were recorded from atop Mount Diablo.
“It’s really special. The veterans all do such a good job talking about their experiences,” Save Mount Diablo executive director Ted Clement said, noting this year the speeches were prerecorded because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“This year it really has some serious significance,” he said. “This year in particular that message is so important we really hope that a lot of people will watch it. We got hit hard on Dec. 7, but we came together after that loss and we are stronger for it.”
Following the video celebration, a Save Mount Diablo volunteer atop the mountain will light the “Eye of Diablo” beacon to shine throughout the night for all those who served and “as a reminder of our strength as a nation when we come together,” Clement said.
The three veterans will give the countdown before the lighting ceremony.
“When that beacon light is turned on, that’s a tribute to those individuals who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor,” Kohler said.
Past presentations were held in person at Cal State East Bay’s Concord campus, so the virtual program is a first for everyone involved.
It’s also the first Mount Diablo Pearl Harbor Remembra nce Day t hat Ganitch will be involved with in decades because he usually flies to the Hawaiian naval base itself for the annual tribute. The pandemic prevented that this year.
Ganitch, now 101, vividly recalls that historic winter morning when, minutes before he was to play in the “Super Bowl of the Navy” against the team from the USS Arizona, Japanese planes attacked. With no time to change clothes, the young sailor had to scramble up to his crow’s nest lookout 70 feet above deck so he could report on the action.
“I had a bird’s-eye view,” Ganitch said in a phone interview. “I was higher than the main deck of the ship. I was higher up than some of the planes that were flying around there. Kinda scary.”
Because the USS Pennsylvania was dry- docked, the ship and its 1,500 sailors were spared from torpedo attacks. But the Japanese did hit it with a 500-pound bomb, which missed the then 22-year-old seaman by about 45 feet, he said.
“I had my (football) gear on me throughout the attack; they couldn’t hurt me,” he added. “We never played the game. We had things to do, like fighting a war.”
Tragically, 23 men on the USS Pennsylvania died in the attack, though, he said.
“If I had seen it (the approaching bomb) I would have died right there, but it was kinda scary to see a hole by the side of me,” Ganitch said.“That was the only damage my ship had that particular day.”
Nearby, the destroyer USS Cassin was hit and burned out , capsizing against the USS Downes on the Pearl Harbor dry dock.
“The only bad thing is the oil came on top of the water, caught fire and so we had flames all around us,” Ganitch recalled. “Because oil and water don’t mix, so the oil on top of the water caught fire and so it got pretty hot all around us. We were fortunate there that’s the only hit we had.”
The first ship out of the harbor following the two-hour attack was Byal’s, the USS ST. Louis, a light cruiser credited with knocking down three enemy planes on Dec. 7, 1941.
“It was the day before my birthday and that was a heckuva present they gave us,” the 99-year- old Byal said.
When Kohler found himself and fellow sailors under attack on Ford Island in the center of Pearl Harbor, the then-teenager ran toward danger instead of away from it.
“Though it wasn’t fully daylight yet, I could make out the outline of that airplane in a steep power dive and see what’s looking like a … plane flashing lights, and I’m hearing screams, whizzing, popping, buzzing sounds all about,” Kohler said in his video interview with Save Mount Diablo.
“I felt we had to do something,” he recalled. “Someone yelled to get back in that ditch, but we shouldn’t be in a ditch, we’re military men, and we should be putting up a defense. I knew then it was the beginning of the war we had been talking about, and I wanted my family and my country to know that I had died fighting.”
Sacrifices like Kohler’s and the others’ should never be forgotten, Clement said, which is why the Dec. 7 lighting of the Mount Diablo beacon is so important.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, officials feared the beacon might draw a similar assault on California, so its light was extinguished during World War II’s West Coast blackout. It stayed dark until Pearl Harbor Day in 1964, when U.S. Navy Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of Pacific forces during World War II, lit it again in a commemorative ceremony and suggested it be illuminated every Dec. 7.
After many years, the beacon fell into disrepair until restored in 2013 with help from Save Mount Diablo. In April the group began lighting the beacon every Sunday in honor of the heroes fighting the pandemic and plans to keep up the tradition until it is over.
“We have come together before (on Dec. 7, 1941) and we can rise above it ( pandemic), and if we do, we are unstoppable at that point,” Clement said.
To see this year’s virtual Pearl Harbor program at 4:30 p.m. today, look for the link www.savemountdiablo.org on Save Mount Diablo’s home page. It also will be shown at that same time on Contra Costa Television and rebroadcast several times afterward. For details, go to contracostatv.org.