War is hell, even 75 years later
Charles Hocker wanted to escape Beaver Dam, Ky. Vito Colonna was trying to help out his struggling family in Cleveland. John Gideon followed a friend into the Navy, thinking about what young men think about.
"I pictured hula girls,” said Hocker.
And that’s why they were American military men in what seemed like paradise — in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on a day, 75 years ago, that will live in infamy.
They were so very young then, Gideon the oldest at 21. Today, for anyone who believes that time heals all wounds, that war can be left on the battlefield or even that survivor’s guilt recedes with time, listen to three nonagenarians who will, quietly, set you straight. They are from separate states, were interviewed separately and have little – and everything – in common.
“I lay awake in bed” some nights, said Gideon, now 96 and then a Navy Seaman 1st Class.
“The memories still flash through my mind,” said Hocker, 92, then in the Army only because he falsified his birth certificate.
“Why are you keeping me here?” Colonna, 92, then a Navy medic who was one of the few to survive the sinking of the USS Arizona, said he still asks God. “Did I do something wrong?”
Coming from a family with 16 children, Colonna at age 14 found work at a Cleveland hospital during the Depression and picked up terminology and tips from the medical staff. So when he joined the Navy two years later — lying about his age — he was tapped to be a medic.