Continued from Jan. 5th.
"When there was a lull in the bombing, a truck came along with a sound system announcing it was taking all sailors aboard. The Utah sailors went to the USS Vestal."
Once there, he James Clark was dispatched to the infirmary. "The officer looked at me and asked if I was alright. I said I was and he said 'Okay, get cleaned up.' I had oil on my face."
At the infirmary, Clark said "they were breaking out the machine guns. They asked me if I knew anything about them and when I said I did, they put me to work..
"We had two assembly lines going. We put the guns together and carried them out and put them on trucks to use for defense purposes."
For the first time in his story, Clark paused, his face reddening and his voice breaking. "Oh boy" he said, "this gets touchy for me. When we were setting up the guns there were civilians there\---Japanese and all\---asking , 'What can I do? What can I do?'" These were Japanese civilians.
Clark said he had bitterness toward the Japanese for many years, but he is now touched by the fact that those on Pearl Harbor that day were eager to arm themselves and fight against their own countrymen.
"That struck me\--the way they wanted to fight back. But we all wanted to do something. We wanted to get at 'em."
You usually don't get this much information from a newspaper account of a Pearl Harbor survivor, so I am writing it verbatim from the story which appeared in the Dec. 6, 2008, Marshall, Texas News Messenger.
More to Come. --Cooter
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