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The crude oil was already 30 inches deep on Battleship Row by the time 18-year-old Harold Helser arrived on the shore, looking for a way to help.
Overhead, Japanese planes continued to drop bombs and strafe with their machine guns, as the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor raged on.
The Elkhart County farm kid, who dropped out of high school at 17 to join the peacetime Navy, was unprepared for what he saw.
Above him, on the wreckage of a battleship, were fellow sailors engulfed in flames and screaming for help.
Some jumped into the waters below, covered with the oil leaked from a dozen sinking ships.
Now, 70 years later, the thought brings Helser to tears. With his hand he covers his face, and his voice stops short.
The sailors seeking relief in the waters below, found only a fresh new hell instead.
Watching from the shore, Helser felt the pain of helpless frustration.
“There was nothing,” Helser said through the tears, “I could do.”
HISTORY
Wednesday is the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack that launched the United States into World War II, which subsequently came to define an entire generation.
For most of us it is a lesson in history, the deadliest military attack by a foreign power on U.S. soil.
It’s something we read about, see in documentaries, relive in movies.
It’s easy to forget that seven decades later, the men and women who lived through that day are still among us.
But their numbers are dwindling.
It’s believed only 39 survivors of the battle of Pearl Harbor are still living in Indiana, said Jim Laud Sr., chairman for the state’s chapter of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
National estimates, Laud said, put the number of survivors at 8,000, but that number grows smaller each month.
And each passing, each death, leaves one less person to carry the memory of the day, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, “which will live in infamy.”
PEACE TIME
Although the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, the idea that the country was headed toward war was not.
