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Sailor’s chilling tale — untold for 7 long decades — is shared
Survivor comes to grips with the chilling day. See historical photos at
HONOLULU — He walked slowly, an entourage of help ensuring he didn’t slip. People in the bar clapped as he moved past. Then Lauren Bruner gave up his cane and settled at a table against the wall where his picture had been hanging for years.
Dwight Lockwood, reedthin in shorts and flip-flops, darted behind the bar and quickly popped the cap off a Kona Longboard beer. “It’s his favorite,” he said. The drink was on the house, of course.
Bruner took a swig. Around him, dozens of people waited to shake his hand, share a story or take a picture. The bar was a dive, barely more than the width of a long hallway. He looked around from the stool — his stool — and the decades began to melt away.
No longer was he 96, with a broken heart and a busted back. He was back in Smith’s Union Bar, and it was in the exact place it had been when he was stationed at Pearl Harbor all those years ago. In his mind, he was 21 again — strong from swabbing decks and climbing ladders aboard the battleship Arizona.
Then came Dec. 7, 1941 — the day that will live in infamy, the day the U.S. got drawn into World War II in a hail of fire and fury. The day more than 2,400 men and women died in a surprise attack from a country America wasn’t even at war with. The day Bruner has spent most of his life not talking about.
That changed a few years ago, when he met Ed McGrath.
It has been a week of memories all over this tropical Navy town, where survivors are commemorating the day the Imperial Japanese Navy, seeking to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet out of Southeast Asia, aimed 353 bombers, fighter planes and torpedo planes in a preemptive strike at eight Navy battleships berthed at Pearl Harbor, including the Arizona.
Bruner worked in fire control, where the ship’s guns were aimed. He spent months in the hospital, and in 1942 joined a crew on a destroyer to finish out the war. From there, he settled in La Mirada, Calif., with his wife and got a job at a plant making industrial-size refrigerators.
His life never included having children, and it also never included talking about what happened that day on the Arizona.
But then, one day in 2011, long after he’d retired, Bruner got a phone call. A man named Ed McGrath said he’d seen his name on a list of Arizona survivors and wondered whether he’d be willing to talk to him. Bruner said he wouldn’t talk about the attack, but he’d be happy to meet with him.
“I had called 12 Arizona survivors and Lauren was the only one who responded,” McGrath said.
McGrath, 70, had worked in Hawaii in the early 1970s and fell in love with the history and culture of the islands. Writing a book or making a film about Pearl Harbor wasn’t something he’d tried before — but why not?
McGrath showed up at Bruner’s house in Southern California, and the two men sat down in the kitchen. “We started just by talking about his life and his naval career,” McGrath said.
The next week, McGrath came back. And the week after that.
Every Thursday morning, he’d go through the same routine: Drive some 42 miles from his home in Palos Verdes to Bruner’s house.
McGrath would drive in silence, lost in thought. He’d pull up to the modest home with light-green trim and Bruner would let him in.
Slowly, the memories began to leak out.
Bruner talked about how the crew on the Arizona, which he’d joined in 1939, would make wagers on what time the anchor would drop. Bruner only won that pool once. There were tales of fights he broke up at the bar, scuffles he got into himself, how he met actress Lana Turner on the beach in Hawaii.
When it came to the attack itself, though, there was not a word. McGrath would ask around the subject and Bruner wouldn’t bite.
Then one day Bruner was talking, and McGrath noticed he’d started to cry.
The old man started with three words: “It was bad,” he said.
McGrath listened intently through Bruner’s tears. The story was worse than he’d imagined.
“He told me that the ship was listing and he was looking down on the deck and there are bodies everywhere,” McGrath said. “But he said he spotted these two sailors wearing their white uniforms, and the way they were walking, they looked like two friends taking a walk. He said he thought they’d be OK and were going to make it. Then, he said, they turned around and their uniforms were burned off, their hair was burned off and even their peckers were burned off.”
McGrath was scribbling down notes quickly as Bruner began to open up more. He began recording everything. It was as if McGrath had poked a hole in a bag of salt and the building pressure around the hole opened the rip wider.