Art Buell is as mild-mannered, as peace-loving a man as you'll ever meet -- and no, he's no longer mad.
But for a long time he was. Good and mad. He remembers when it began, sitting on the side of the road on the outskirts of Honolulu, the Springfield rifle he'd been issued a few minutes earlier weighing heavy on his shoulder, the half-dozen rounds of ammo around his waist weighing even heavier.It was a Sunday. He'd gotten up early and was thinking he'd spend the day at a beach. Now he was guarding a harbor.
The locals named it Pearl.
Fifty-seven years later, Art Buell, still a pacifist and a patriot -- at 81, he likes to donate his time at the Fort Douglas military museum -- doesn't seek publicity, although this time of year it often finds him. That's the way it is when you're one of the approximately 9,000 American soldiers still alive who were there, at Pearl Harbor, the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese dropped the bombs that started World War II.
"Real planes," says Art, a tone of disbelief in his voice still, "dropping real bombs."
There were rumors the Japanese might strike, but if an attack was to come, the smart money in Washington -- and among the 94 Pacific Fleet ships tranquilly floating in Pearl Harbor -- was on the Philippines or Malaysia or maybe Singapore.
When Chief Machinist Buell heard the first explosions at 7:55 Sunday morning, he reached up and closed the porthole above him, thinking it might be an Army maneuver.
But then he went topside.
From the deck of his ship/home -- a floating repair vessel called the USS Medusa -- he had a clear view of just what was going on. Not far away, on Battleship Row, the Japanese were tearing away at the U.S. fleet. Blasting it with everything they had. On the morrow, the Medusa would have unprecedented demand for its services.
But for now, Art was given a rifle and loaded on a boat for shore. If the Japanese had also arrived by land -- as the rampant rumor mill had it -- then his orders were simple: "If it comes over the hill and it's Japanese, shoot it."
For Art, like most all of the nearly 100,000 troops stationed at Pearl Harbor, the range of emotions moved swiftly from shock to anger.
"I sat there with that rifle and I started getting mad, and then I got madder," he says. "I stayed mad from 1941 to about 1946. Since then I've softened up a bit."
He never did fire a shot. Those ground troops never came. And the airstrike never returned, either. The fight started in Hawaii, and then moved on. Pearl Harbor was the thump on the chest.
Aboard the Medusa, Art helped clean up and repair Pearl Harbor for another year and a half, then the Navy sent him to diesel school. When the war ended in 1945, he was on another island, Guam this time, getting an amphibious fleet ready for a frontal assault on Japan that would be rendered unnecessary by the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent Japanese surrender.
"This isn't original with me," says Art, "but I agree with whoever said it: 'If there had been no Pearl Harbor there would have been no Hiroshima."'
Today, Art Buell and a dozen or so of his fellow Pearl Harbor alumni, Utah chapter, held their annual Pearl Harbor Day ceremony in Salt Lake's Memory Grove. As always, they remembered the 2,403 who died during those terrible two hours 57 years ago this morning, and they solemnly repeated their official motto: "Remember Pearl Harbor -- Keep America Alert."
"If we keep our defenses up, we won't be surprised again," said Art Buell. "Ever."
"And you know," he added, "at Pearl Harbor we lost the battle . . . but we did win the war."
Lee Benson accepts faxes at 801-237-2527 and e-mail at (lbenson@desnews.com). His column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday.