Pearl Harbor survivor a hero to visitors

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Pearl Harbor survivor a hero to visitors




By Dan Nakaso - The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted : Sunday Dec 2, 2007 17:17:47 EST

HONOLULU — The hearing’s gone in Dr. Rodney West’s right ear. He’s had to use a wheelchair since falling and breaking his hip after attending ceremonies last Dec. 7 for the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
At age 96, it’s sometimes difficult for West to remember details of things that happened to him just a few hours earlier.
“My memory is not as good as it used to be,” West said.
But when he’s asked about what he did on Dec. 7, 1941, West sits up straight in his wheelchair and his voice drops into a lower register as the pictures in his mind rewind 66 years to the sight of Japanese Zeros strafing the Pacific Fleet, bombs falling from the sky and charred men screaming in West’s usually sleepy dispensary on Ford Island.
“They had burns all over,” said West, who was a lieutenant junior grade assigned to the dispensary with six other Navy doctors. “You’d pick them up and their skin would come off. It was not a nice thing to see.”
Sixteen years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack that launched America into World War II, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association estimated it had 40,000 members still alive, said Mal Middlesworth, the group’s national president.
Today, there are only about 5,000 survivors of the attack, including West.
So West transforms into something of a World War II rock star every Wednesday when he sits at a table at the USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center and signs autographs and greets dozens of people who want to shake the hand of someone who not only survived the attack, but treated about 100 wounded sailors and soldiers in a dispensary normally accustomed to dealing with colds and scrapes.
“There were so many” wounded, West said. “We gave them morphine for the pain and treated them with what we had, which was not much.”
West can’t hear his fans’ questions over the din of hundreds of visitors mingling around the USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center’s bookstore, where he signs copies of the eighth edition of his book, “Honolulu Prepares for Japan’s Attack.”
“He’s a hero,” Gina LaRock of Madison, Wis., said after West autographed a photo of the Arizona Memorial that she just purchased. “He helped save our country.”
Many of the dozens of people who surround West each Wednesday are unabashed in their reasons for wanting to meet one of the few remaining Pearl Harbor survivors.
“He’s living history and he’s not going to be around much longer,” said Richard Schellenger of Eugene, Ore., who bought one of West’s books for him to sign. “Once he’s gone, he’s gone.”
West had been in the Naval Reserve and was activated in September, while simultaneously running a private medical practice in an office he shared at the site of the present state Capitol.
On that lazy Sunday, West was in his Manoa home getting ready to head to the office when his father called at 8:15 a.m. to tell West to turn on the radio.
In his book, West wrote that the announcer said, “All military personnel must report to their duty stations, immediately! ... We are being attacked. ... The attackers have been identified as the Japanese!”
West piled into his green 1941 Oldsmobile, picked up two aviator friends and barreled toward Pearl Harbor at 70 mph, stopping only for military checkpoints.
As they got closer, the men could see planes, fire, heavy smoke and anti-aircraft shells bursting in the sky.
They jumped out at Hospital Point on the Pearl Harbor Naval base and looked for a ferry to take them to Ford Island, where the PB2Y hangar had been bombed and was still in flames. The men could only find an open skiff with an outboard motor and a sailor willing to risk enemy fire to get them across.
“There was all kinds of shooting and noise and we looked at that boat and said, ‘We’ve got to go through in that?’ ” West said. “We said, ‘If this kid’s brave enough to take us there, let’s get aboard.’ ”
The sailor took them past the crippled battleship Nevada, which was still being strafed by Japanese fighters, the battleship California, the overturned battleship Oklahoma and the damaged battleship Maryland.
Once on Ford Island, West ran to the two-story, Pearl Harbor Naval Air Station Dispensary, where a delayed action bomb apparently intended for the California had left a 7-foot-deep crater in the middle of the dispensary’s courtyard.
Inside, West saw burned sailors and soldiers everywhere, including at least 10 who were on the floor. Most had suffered flash burns from exploding ordnance.
West and the other doctors worked until 5 p.m. treating the burn victims with only morphine and bandages. They didn’t even have penicillin.
When it was over, there were no ribbons or medals for what he did. “It was our duty,” West said plainly. “You don’t make a big deal about it.”
Today, almost 66 years later, West understands why people want to meet him.
“There’s a special feeling, even for the kids, to shake the hand of someone who’s been under fire,” West said. “This was the biggest and the worst war we’ve ever had. To them, I guess I am a hero.”



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[sfga6970]

He is definitely a hero and a living piece of our history.