Pearl Harbor changed everything
George H.W. Bush died on Friday, just a week before the country marks the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — an event that changed his life.
Bush was a high school senior on Dec. 7, 1941. He was walking on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, when he heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. According to Bush biographer and presidential historian Jon Meacham, Bush wanted to serve immediately.
“After Pearl Harbor, it was a different world altogether,” Bush later recalled for Meacham’s biography, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.”
“It was a red, white and blue thing. Your country’s attacked, you’d better get in there and try to help.”
Bush briefly considered enlisting in the Royal Air Force in Canada because, as Bush told Meacham, he “could get through much faster.” But Bush was lured by naval service, inspired by the grandeur of the Navy’s power and its reputation for camaraderie and purpose.
That winter, Bush was not yet 18. He went home While George H.W. Bush was vice president in 1987, he climbed aboard a World War II B-17 bomber during a campaign stop at Boire Field in Nashua, N.H. The former Navy pilot who was shot down over Tokyo Bay, was at a veterans ceremony honoring one of the last B-17 bombers.
for his last Christmas out of uniform. And at a Christmas dance, he set his eyes on his future wife, Barbara Pierce. She was 16.
On June 12, 1942, Bush turned 18 and graduated from Andover. After commencement, he left for Boston to be sworn into the Navy. Nearly one year later, Bush became a U.S. Naval Reserve officer and earned his wings as a naval aviator. Just days shy of his 19th birthday, he was assigned to fly torpedo bombers off aircraft carriers in the Pacific.
At dawn on Sept. 2, 1944, Bush was slated to fly in a strike over Chichi Jima, a Japanese island about 500
miles from the mainland. The island was a stronghold for communications and supplies for the Japanese, and it was heavily guarded. Bush’s target was a radio tower.
About 7:15 that morning, Bush took off through clear skies along with William G. “Ted” White and John “Del” Delaney. Just over an hour later, their plane was hit. Meacham wrote that smoke filled the cockpit and flames swallowed the wings. Bush radioed White and Delaney to put on their parachutes.
“My God,” Bush thought to himself, “this thing is going to blow up.”
Choking on the smoke, Bush continued to steer the plane, dropping bombs and hitting the radio tower. He told White and Delaney to parachute out of the plane, then climbed through his open hatch to maneuver out of the cockpit.
The wind propelled him backward, Meacham wrote. “He gashed his head and bruised his eye on the tail as he flew through the sky and the burning plane hurtled toward the sea.”
As Bush floated in his parachute, he saw his plane crash into the water. Then he hit the waves, fighting his way back up to the surface.
Fifty feet away bobbed a life raft that Bush managed to inflate and flop onto. But the wind was carrying him toward Chichi Jima, so Bush began paddling in the opposite direction.
He was alone, slowly grasping that White and Delaney were gone. Hours passed. He cried and thought of home.
Bush, who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism under fire, thought he was delirious when, suddenly, a 311-foot submarine rose from the depths to rescue him.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” greeted a torpedoman second class.
“Happy to be aboard,” replied the future commander in chief.