S.A. luncheon continues to honor Pearl Harbor vets
There’s a new normal for the families who gathered Thursday at the Barn Door restaurant on the North Side to mark the 82nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
For the second year in a row, no surviving veterans of the battle were on hand. So 26 of their family members carried on without them.
“We’re still here. We’re still surviving,” said Ron Botello, 77, who with his sister, Irene Hernandez, 72, has organized the annual Pearl Harbor Day luncheon since the 1970s.
He added: “We’re going to do this as long as we can.”
Everyone bowed their heads for a moment of silence at 11:55 a.m., the moment the Japanese began their attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
Then family members at three tables stood to introduce themselves and their relatives. Sharon Gregory, daughter of Air Force Maj. Richard Anderson, told everyone her late father was at Hickam Field, next to the naval base at Pearl Harbor, on the day of the attack.
“This is my sister Sandra, my son Sean, my son Warren, my grandson Ray, my granddaughter Alyssa, my daughter-in-law Andrea and my grandson Andrew,” said Gregory, 77, of San Antonio. “And while I am standing up, I wanted to say that we appreciate so much what Ron and Irene do for us in organizing this year and every year.”
There’s believed to be just one surviving San Antonio-area veteran of the battle, but retired Chief Petty Officer Gilbert Meyer, age 100, wasn’t at the luncheon. It was the second year in a row he missed the gathering, and people at the luncheon were unsure of his whereabouts.
Not long ago, there were three surviving Pearl Harbor vets in the region, but Kenneth Platt and Heinz Bachman both died in August 2022. They were 101 and 100, respectively.
Platt, a retired Air Force Technical sergeant, was always the life of the party, but he had been in declining health after celebrating his 101st birthday on May 15, 2022.
Bachman was a reclusive sort, and until the last years of his life, few people were aware the one-time Army Air Corps staff sergeant was a Pearl Harbor survivor.
In 1992, the San Antonio Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had 64 members. By 2018, just four were left — not counting Bachman and Seaman 1st Class Abner James “A.J.” Dunn, neither of whom was known to the association.
Dunn died on Nov. 23, 2020, at age 98.
A unanimous ‘yes’
With no one but the kids and grandchildren left, a question arose at last year’s event: Did the group want to continue meeting every year?
Those in attendance unanimously voted yes, and on
Thursday they got together again to dine on bacon-wrapped chopped sirloin and 8-ounce rib-eye steaks in the Barn Door’s History Room, which is adorned with battlefield paintings, combat patches and newspaper front pages. One, from the Honolulu Star-bulletin, proclaimed: “War! Oahu Bombed by Japanese Planes.”
The family members hugged each other like long-lost friends and relatives, laughed, caught up on personal news and discussed current events before the moment of silence, when prayers were said for the combatants.
On that sunny morning in the Pacific, a Japanese strike force of 353 aircraft launched from six carriers, wrecking the U.S. Navy fleet and destroying most of the Army’s Hawaii-based aircraft on the ground. The casualty count: 2,335 Americans dead, 68 of them civilians.
The enemy planes came in two waves, sinking or damaging 21 ships. The USS Arizona, now a memorial in Honolulu, lost 1,177 sailors and Marines.
Congress declared war on Japan the next day.
Each of the veterans honored at the annual gatherings had his own story, and their tales were shared at the dining tables of the Barn Door.
Anderson, for instance, joined the Army Air Corps because he was fascinated with airplanes. His buddy Eugene Whitcomb enlisted because he figured a Navy uniform would help him pick up girls.
Both were in Honolulu on the day of battle. Anderson was asleep in his barracks when the attack began. Whitcomb was aboard the USS Arizona.
Blessed with good luck
Platt always said he’d been blessed with good luck, and he caught a break on Dec. 7, 1941, when bullets from a Japanese plane smashed through the window of his barracks while he slept.
A few days earlier, Platt had rearranged the sleeping area and moved his bunk.
“He was a corporal at the time, which meant he could move his bed anywhere he wanted,” his son, Wayne Platt, 77, said as the luncheon guests awaited their salads. “The person that was in the bed place he was in got shot.”
Bachman joined the Army in 1939 and was stationed at Hickam Field when the Japanese attacked.
“The Navy got the worst of it. Then they came by and started shooting up Wheeler Field, where the fighters were stationed, and then they came by and started shooting up Hickam Field, and shooting up all the planes there, and did some bombing on the buildings and then did a lot of strafing,” he recalled before his death.
Asked if he had any close calls, Bachman replied, “No, not really, but I was fortunate enough not to be in the main building that morning. I was on detached service on another part of the field, and the main building got hit, right in the middle of the building.”
‘A close call’
Botello’s late father, Reynaldo, was a radioman first class aboard the USS Detroit. A Burbank High School graduate, he was one of eight children and needed his parents to sign for him when he joined the Navy in 1940. He was 18 on the day of battle, and although the Detroit was not hit, a San Antonio newspaper reported Botello as missing.
“I guess everybody had a close call,” his son said.
Johnnie Singleton was drinking coffee and making cinnamon toast in the officers’ pantry aboard the USS Maryland when bombs hit the ship and the nearby USS Oklahoma. His wife, Rose Singleton, was at Thursday’s luncheon after burying her daughter, Idella Elam, 66, the day before.
“If he was living, he would want me to be here,” she said of her husband.