On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, in an attack
that killed more than 2,400. Now, 65 years later, a local survivor
and a survivor’s widow reflect on the ‘Day of Infamy’
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941 dawned bright and clear over Pearl Harbor. It was business as usual aboard the USS West Virginia, USS Tennessee and USS Arizona, three Navy ships moored next to each other in the harbor. Seaman First Class Charles “Chuck” Verbanic was working below deck on the Tennessee when a call came over the ship’s intercom system.
“This voice on the speaker said, ‘All hands, man your battle stations. This is not a drill,'” Chuck recalled. “We’d been washing the bulkheads – that’s the Navy word for ‘walls’ – and we dropped everything and ran. When I got up to the deck, well, it was like nothing I’d ever seen.”
Black, toxic smoke billowed out of the USS Arizona, located to the left of the Tennessee, obscuring the sun. The USS West Virginia, to the right of the Tennessee, listed drunkenly, shuddering with the impact of torpedoes slamming into her hull.
“The Japanese planes were flying over the top of us, barely higher than the ship,” said Chuck, now 87. “You could see them looking down right at you. They could fly as low as they wanted because no one was shooting back at them. No one stopped to think – there was too much going on. We just ran.”
Chuck’s regular position on the ship was in the cage mast, located 90 feet above the battleship’s deck, where he manned a main gun, which fired 40-millimeter rounds. But he didn’t bother to start the climb up to his gun. He and all the sailors knew there was no ammunition available for their weapons: It was all locked up in supply rooms because it was a Sunday and they were in the harbor.
“We had to break the locks on the supply rooms, and we picked up boxes of shells that usually took two men to carry,” recalled Chuck, a Hollister resident. “We were so scared, we picked them up like they were nothing and ran to the nearest guns.”
Looking back on the mayhem of the attack, Chuck said he believes the crew of the Tennessee were in the arms of God that day. Smoke from the Arizona, which was devastated by massive explosions, partially obscured the Tennessee, making it a hard target for Japanese pilots to bomb. The Tennessee was also tied to the West Virginia, which took the impact of torpedoes aimed at both ships, absorbing almost all the impact.
“We did have some minor bomb damage and we took a lot of machine gun fire, but we were OK,” he said. “It was a miracle. I remember the smoke – there was a lot of smoke. And when the West Virginia started taking on water, I remember her crew started jumping from that deck onto our deck. I saw a neighbor of mine from when I was a kid back in Ohio. He jumped from the West Virginia onto our ship. I hadn’t even known he was over there. But that was the last time I saw him. To this day, I don’t know if he died at Pearl Harbor or not.”
After the attack, the sailors stayed at their guns. They stayed there all night and into the next day. Things were still smoking and burning, and people walked around in a kind of dazed shock. It took two weeks to clear debris from the harbor so the Tennessee could get out and meet up with other American battleships in the fleet. They missed the battle at Midway by just two days.
Despite living through one of the darkest days in American history, Chuck said the most scared he ever felt wasn’t during the Pearl Harbor attack. His moment of terror came later, off the coast of Saipan, when the Japanese opened fire, sending bullets flying just above his head. He watched as bullets hit fellow crew members only a few feet away, killing them.
Chuck doesn’t talk much about his war experiences, saying he doesn’t “go for that rah-rah stuff.” His attitude is that everyone that was part of the war did what they had to do, and so did he. It just happened that he was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. He’s bewildered about being interviewed by the local newspaper two years in a row, dismissing the importance of being the only known Pearl Harbor survivor in the South Valley.
“He just doesn’t talk about Pearl Harbor much – you have to ask him about it,” said Chuck’s wife, Antoinette “Tone” Verbanic. “You know, I never saw him cry when he thought about the attack or when he talked about the war. But he did cry when he saw that movie ‘Pearl Harbor.’ He said they did a good job of showing what it was really like.”
The 2001 film, starring Ben Affleck, graphically depicts the Pearl Harbor attacks, showing the Arizona taking bombs, Japanese planes dropping torpedoes especially designed for the shallower waters of the harbor and destruction to other military installations, including the Air Force’s Hickam Field.
Next week, on Pearl Harbor Day, it’s important for people to remember that not only did the Navy experience causalities, but so did people at Hickam Field and the Army’s Scofield Barracks, said Al Schmidt, a Morgan Hill resident and American Legion commander.
“We do have to recognize that day for what it was – the event that got us into the war with Japan,” Schmidt said. “It was a landmark day for America, and we need to remember it.”
Hollister resident Lena Lewis said she thinks of her husband, Perry Lewis, on Pearl Harbor Day. Perry, who died in 2000, was also at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was 20 years old at the time.
“He was in the Marines, in the barracks,” she said. “He told me they were sleeping and then they heard the bombs. They got up and started running toward the ships.”
Perry and his fellow Marines did whatever they saw needed to be done following the attacks. He spent most of the day pulling wounded sailors out of the water and getting them medical aid.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Perry was sent to the Pacific front. When he came back from war, he experienced shell shock.
“He had a hard time talking about the war, and if we were walking down the street and there was a bang, he’d fall to the floor,” Lena recalled. “He said Pearl Harbor and the war were like hell.”
The Lewises attended the 50th anniversary ceremony at Pearl Harbor in 1991. She said he didn’t really want to go, but she talked him into it.
“He said it ended up being one of the greatest experiences of his life – some of those men he hadn’t seen in 50 years,” Lena said. “When he saw some of his old friends, he started to cry. He just cried and cried. They had several functions – ceremonies and parades – for us to go to. Everything was beautiful. To the day he died, he never forgot he was a Marine and he never forgot what happened at Pearl Harbor.”
