Roman remembers watching Pearl Harbor attack
As a 6-year-old child, William L. Benson Jr. thought it was an Army exercise.
Memories frequently fade with the passage of time, but William L. Benson Jr.’s images of the bombing of Pearl Harbor are still vivid 75 year later.
“We went out on the front lawn and watched,” said Rome’s Benson of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack in Hawaii that drew America into World War II. “We thought it was the Army doing exercises.”
His father, William L. Benson Sr., was a lieutenant commander and engineering officer assigned to the USS Oklahoma. He was off that morning, and they were at home in Honolulu when they heard a racket outside. Benson recalls that a short time later his father got a call telling
William L. Benson Jr. looks at a photocopy of a picture of the USS Oklahoma on fire after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
him the Navy was sending a vehicle to pick him up to help with the rescue efforts.
“He ran the rescue operation that pulled 32 men out of the
hull of the Oklahoma,” Benson said.
As a 6-year-old, Benson said he still didn’t know it was a Japanese attack until after his father
got home hours and hours later.
“We could hear explosions and a few shells eventually began to land,” he said.
A lot of the shells that were landing in civilian areas were from so-called friendly fire.
“The Army and Navy were shooting up at those planes and (ones that didn’t hit a target) they had to land somewhere,” Benson said.
It wasn’t long before orders came in sending the elder Benson back to the states to a desk job in Washington. Before they left Oahu, Benson remembers his father telling him to immediately come inside any time he was outside playing and heard airplanes.
from A1
The fear was real, but just before the family transferred, he remembers hearing planes going out every morning. His father explained that those were U.S. aircraft hunting Japanese submarines.
When they boarded a ship to leave Honolulu, Benson recalls sailing past the upside down hull of the Oklahoma.
“I never realized the bottom of a Navy ship was red,” he said.
Benson, 81, has photocopies of the Oklahoma with his father in a Panama hat standing on the deck. He’s also got the original telegrams that his mother sent home three days after the attack to let her mother know everyone in the family was all right.
“I think the people of this country ought to remember,” Benson said. Telegrams back home and to Hawaii: William Benson’s mother sent “All safe” (letters traced to be visible), and his grandmother replied, “This made me happier than anything I ever received in my life after a week of horrible anxiety.”