Queen Wilhelmina Sentences a Traitor,
January 8, 1948

n January 8, 1948, having been condemned to death for treason against her country, Madame Anna “Ans” van Dijk made a final appeal for clemency to her sovereign, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. A more distinct paradox could hardly be conjured than the wartime disloyalty of the supplicant and the unflinching duty displayed on the part of the Monarch in the recent conflict. However, not a single female Dutch collaborator had been executed as yet, despite many being sentenced to incarceration for up to twenty years for their complicit activity. Upon reviewing the case, Queen Wilhelmina found, just as the courts of her nation had, that Ans van Dijk was guilty of treason and responsible for the deaths of up to 700 Jews and members of the Dutch resistance—including those who had once protected her own Jewish heritage by offering up their homes and their lives to hide her identity. How did it come about that a Jewish woman of well-to-do origins became one of the Gestapo’s leading “Jew Hunters” in Holland during World War II? And by eventual justice the only Dutch woman to be held fully responsible for her crimes?

Ans van Dijk (1905-1948) standing trial in Amsterdam, February 24, 1947

For much of the 1930s, Queen Wilhelmina—who had steered her country through many events including the Boer War and Holland’s tenuous neutrality during World War I—had desperately tried to rouse her ministers to brace for a brewing storm of Nazism in their neighbor Germany and amongst their own populace.

Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880-1962)

A proud descendent of Protestant heroes such as William the Silent and William of Orange, Queen Wilhelmina was an ardent student of history, ambitious to be foremost in the line of duty and disparaging of all false optimism in regards to Adolf Hitler’s plans for empire. Unfortunately, she was almost alone in this foresight. She wrote: “by the spring of 1938 when Hitler invaded Austria, it was plain to me that German policy would result in a European catastrophe,” but to her despair, the Dutch people and their ministers were “quietly asleep on a pillow called neutrality… Shortly before the war it was necessary for me to point out that our soon-to-be enemy had written a book (Mein Kampf), and that it might be of some use to examine its contents.”

King Williem III (1817-1890) and Queen Emma (1858-1934) of the Netherlands—Queen Wilhelmina was their only child

10th anniversary meeting of the NSB (Dutch national socialist party), 1941

By 1939 Hitler had invaded Poland and caused complete devastation there. Terror fell from the skies on Norway next, in the form of the Luftwaffe’s legendary blitzkrieg. Holland had little time, resources or tactics to deploy before she was under attack along with Belgium and France. Their invaders dropped by the thousands, parachuting into fields carpeted with tulips, overtaking the peaceful streets of Holland. Other than a brief uprising in 1830, the Dutch had been at peace for 125 years. Upon finding themselves suddenly occupied by a ruthless and seasoned enemy, their defenses broke speedily. The German forces quickly seized all vital motorways, government buildings and, after a brief struggle, practically obliterated the Dutch Air Force. Nearly unhindered, they now advanced towards The Hague to carry out their Führer’s explicit order to take Queen Wilhelmina and her family alive. Previous broadcasts made by the Führer to the Dutch royals—appealing shared Aryan blood and other imagined commonalities—had all been derisively ignored. Determined not to be caught alive, Queen Wilhelmina first called the King of England to personally beg for reinforcements. When informed that he had already sent Belgium all he could spare, she readied her family and fled for England.

SS recruiting poster urging Dutch people to join the fight against Bolshevism

A man climbs over a barbed-wire barrier which separates the significant Jewish district of Amsterdam from the rest of the city

Well aware that her abandonment of the country would be devastating for the morale of her people, Queen Wilhelmina arrived in London determined to return a conqueror. She set up headquarters in the bomb-pitted shells of Piccadilly Square, and from there refused to budge, hosting noteworthy exiles such as Charles De Gaulle and the president of Poland, conspiring with them to create an effective league providing supplies and leadership to the resistance cells already forming back home. Such staunch resistors were indeed forming en masse, and while the disorganized initial attempts often led to cruel discovery, eventually a substantial network sprang up in Holland, the tales of which are now notorious and include such heroes as Corrie Ten Boom.

Dutch resistance fighters in Winterswijk, Netherlands, 1941

Using the same “slow boil” method that had crushed Poland, German laws were soon placed on Holland’s economy, religion and most significantly their Jewish population. All detractors were singled out and forced under greater and greater oppression until they were eventually sought out and executed. Ans van Dijk was one of these Dutch Jews discriminated against by the new laws. The milliner shop she ran in Amsterdam along with her female partner was forcibly closed, and as restrictions soon escalated, she found herself depending on resistance members for hiding places to escape discovery and subsequent deportation to the murder camps.

Massive canvassing with the National Socialist (NSB) weekly magazine Volk en Vaderland in Amsterdam by officials, with the slogan: “Our nationalism your salvation, our socialism your future”—the NSB carried out the campaign “The Battle for Amsterdam” for three months, from March to June of 1944

Despite this, Ans van Dijk was caught and arrested in 1943 by Nazi intelligence detective Peter Schaap, of the Office of Jewish Affairs of the Amsterdam police. As per her testimony after the war, she was released after promising to collaborate with the Nazis by infiltrating the same resistance groups that had protected her. Returning to these patriot groups she pretended interest in taking a more active role in the resistance, and so began providing safe houses herself for Jewish refugees, who she would then inevitably betray to her overlords. One hundred and forty-three Jews were sent to their deaths in this manner, including her own brother and his family. She herself was paid handsomely for each innocent man, woman and child she betrayed. It is speculated that amongst her victims were Anne Frank and her relations. Soon, as the war grew more dire, any resistance member who suspected or troubled her was summarily dealt with.

Kamp Schoorl in the Netherlands, photographed sometime between 1940-45

Eventually Holland was retaken, liberated by her Allies. A wave of fury swept the country then as the hunted now became the hunters, ferreting out any who had aided the late savage and vile regime. And worse yet, any who had fed it by craven acts of self protection such as Ans van Dijk.

Members of the NSB (Dutch national socialist party), also called “collaborators”, are rounded up and humiliated (some by having their heads shaved) in 1945 Netherlands

Found living in the Hague on her earned blood money, she was arrested and imprisoned until her trial in 1947 where even her erstwhile Nazi commanders spoke highly of her eagerness to cooperate, defeating her pleas of working under duress. In a court of Dutchmen who had recently lost so many and sacrificed so much under duress themselves, the motive of self preservation was rightfully interpreted as the vice it was: cowardice. She was condemned as a traitor. Ans van Dijk’s last hope was to appeal to Queen Wilhelmina for clemency, but if the traitor thought a comparison could be made or a sympathetic ear reached there, she was gravely disappointed.

Queen Wilhelmina addresses the American Congress in Washington DC, on August 6, 1942

From the day Queen Wilhelmina had fled to England, she took to the BBC to broadcast fiery, achingly human, and most of all, rousing encouragement to her occupied subjects. As Winston Churchill once quipped of her “I fear no man except Queen Wilhelmina.” The mood of her country that had once held animosity for her abandonment soon considered her the exiled light of hope keeping them spurred on and connected to a free and committed outside world. She returned to Holland with a tiny retinue comprising only her daughter and three others before her nation had even been completely liberated. Such devotion and ferocity displayed by their once regal queen of the old order earned her the same respect, loyalty and status amongst her countrymen that had been given her glorious ancestors.

In one of her last acts as Queen, she sentenced Ans van Dijk to death by firing squad—a martial, just and brutal message against those who would embrace pragmatism over love of honor, duty and sacrifice.

Queen Wilhelmina in 1942

Image Credits: 1 Ans van Dijk stands trial (wikipedia.org) 2 Queen Wilhelmina (wikipedia.org) 3 King William III and Queen Emma (wikipedia.org) 4 NSB Meeting, 1941 (wikipedia.org) 5 Recruiting Poster (wikipedia.org) 6 Amsterdam Barrier (wikipedia.org) 7 Dutch Resistance Fighters (wikipedia.org) 8 Amsterdam in 1944 (wikipedia.org) 9 Kamp Schoorl (wikipedia.org) 10 Collaborators (wikipedia.org) 11 Queen Wilhelmina addresses the US Congress (wikipedia.org) 12 Queen Wilhelmina in 1942 (wikipedia.org)

“Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain… I lived in Axe Yard, having my wife, and servant Jane, and no more in family than us three.”—Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys’ First Diary Entry, January 1, 1660

ith this inauspicious summary of the state of things, so began the diary of Samuel Pepys who would, in an astounding twist of providence, prove our greatest contemporary source regarding such impactful events as the Great Fire and Plague of London, the restored court of the Stuart Dynasty, The Anglo-Dutch war and the social aspect of post-Reformation England. For six years Mr. Pepys would chronicle in coded shorthand the various machinations of the English court that he was privy to as a chief Naval Officer. He candidly commentated upon theater and culture, on social catastrophes, on military might and personal infidelities.

A facsimile of a portion of the first entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)

If it were not for a neglected spark in the kitchen of the King’s Baker on the night of September 1, 1666 that spread into an inferno from Pudding Lane to engulf an eventual four fifths of London, Samuel Pepys’ diary may have sunk into obscurity, his previous recounting condemned as humdrum. It was not enough to have survived the Great Plague the previous year—Providence now chose to put Pepys in a peculiar position to witness and record one of the most devastating disasters in western history.

Plague-stricken London in 1665 showing a cart for gathering bodies

On the early morning of September 2, 1666, Pepys was awakened in his London home by a servant who had spotted the fire in the distance, warning that 300 homes had already been lost and it was feared London Bridge might be destroyed. Pepys rushed to the Tower of London to gain a better vantage point over the destruction which he might then report to the King at Westminster. From this view he wrote his eyewitness report in his diary:

Map of central London in 1666, showing landmarks related to the Great Fire of London, including Samuel Pepys’ home (just left of the Tower of London)

“Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that layoff; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconys till they were, some of them burned, their wings, and fell down. Having staid, and in an hour’s time seen the fire: rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs.——– lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, an there burned till it fell down.”

London burns in the background while people flee in boats to safety

It was upon Pepys’ advice that King Charles II issued the order for houses to be leveled in an attempt to create a firewall. The very next day Samuel Pepys himself abandoned London and all his belongings, seeking safety in the countryside. Upon his return to the city days later, the sight of his capitol so destroyed “caused me to weep.”

The London Gazette reports on the Great Fire of London on the morning of September 8, 1666

13,000 houses had been razed, St Paul’s Cathedral and many other landmarks destroyed, an estimated 100,000 people left homeless. Amongst such destruction Pepys found his own house untouched by the flames, and in it, his invaluable diary.

A six-volume edition of Pepys’ diary manuscript

London was soon rebuilt, its churches restored with loving care that made it the glory of its time, its modernized streets broadened and fireproofed by brick and stone, creating the iconic metropolis we all now know and love. Samuel Pepys abandoned his journaling in the year 1669 out of fear of permanently losing his eyesight. He personally bequeathed the beautifully bound record to Magdalen College, Cambridge, which had been his alma mater, and there it was promptly shelved and neglected for generations. Not until the early nineteenth century did a curious young student pull it from its nook, decipher its multi-language code and uncover in it a vast and priceless historical first-hand account of many events which served as turning points for the 17th century.

The Pepys Library in Magdalene College, Cambridge houses the diaries of Samuel Pepys along with his other books

Image Credits: 1 Pepys’ Shorthand (wikipedia.org) 2 Samuel Pepys (wikipedia.org) 3 London Plague (wikipedia.org) 4 The Great Fire of London, 1666 (wikipedia.org) 5 Map of the London Fire (wikipedia.org) 6 The London Gazette (wikipedia.org) 7 Pepys’ diary in 6 volumes (wikipedia.org) 8 The Pepys Library, Cambridge (wikipedia.org)

“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”—Isaiah 2:4

The Christmas Truce, December 25, 1914

ntering 2024, we will soon mark the 110th anniversary of the commencement of the First World War—“the war to end all wars”. In 1914 the nations of Europe collectively produced the greatest human catastrophe in the history of Western Civilization, the causes of which are still debated to this day. In four years of war, about eleven million men died on the battlefield and twenty million were wounded, many of whom later died of wounds. More than seven million civilians died in the war. Improved machine gun and artillery technology created battlefields in which killing proceeded on an industrial scale. The bereavement and sorrow that accompanied this unnecessary tragedy still resonates today, especially in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada.

British and German troops meet in no-man’s-land during the unofficial truce

The Christmas Truce on the Western Front, 1914

The repercussions of the war among “intellectuals” and purveyors of cultural mores in Europe, reflected in their art and philosophies a wholesale abandonment of biblical ethics, moral restraints, and hope in the future. An unrestrained moral turpitude and relativism, born in the evolutionary theories of the previous century, reached their climax in the post-war era. They quickly sifted down to popular culture and produced equally unrestrained offshoots of reaction and nationalistic paganisms represented in the Fascists of Italy and Nazis of Germany, not to speak of the revolutionary excesses of the Bolsheviks in Russia. In modern parlance, The First World War was the tipping point of world-wide change, and not for the better.

On December 25, 1914, with the British and German troops facing each other in their respective trenches across the frozen wastes of no-man’s-land—over which both sides had already shed much blood—a remarkable phenomenon occurred about which entire books have been written. Almost spontaneously, men on both sides began singing Christmas carols. Men so determined the day before to exterminate each other, probably for the last time in all of their lives, commemorated the birth of Christ in music. On the German side, men wore belt buckles stamped “Gott mit uns” (God with us), believing that they were on the side of right. On the English side, numbers of men came from Christian homes, and remembered the carols of safe and warm family celebrations where they sang hymns composed by German and English writers.

Unbelievably, several men climbed out of the trenches with hands up, from both sides, and met in no-man’s-land. Someone kicked out a soccer ball and they formed teams and played. Others exchanged souvenirs and talked about home and families. A few years ago, Sainsbury’s grocery chain in England memorialized that famous Christmas truce with this ad:

When the generals heard about the fraternization with the enemy going on all along the entrenchments, they called a halt to it and ordered the war to resume. Some believe up to a hundred thousand men participated in the informal truce of Christmas 1914.

In the early months of the war, the two sides sometimes agreed to bury bodies, otherwise irretrievably lying between the lines. This event was different—widespread and visually stunning, many men wrote home about it, from both sides. The Christmas truce provided a small shred of humanity in a war that would abandon any pretense of it in the coming years. Not only did that war not end wars, it provided the reason and impetus for a bigger and more destructive one twenty-one years later.

British and German soldiers play a soccer game during the truce

An artist’s impression of the truce from The Illustrated London News

Man has sought to find a solution to war through institutions like the League of Nations and the United Nations, treaties, policies like “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD), and legislation. No attempts at eradicating the sins of men and nations nor ending their never-ending pursuit of war through government action can or will succeed without the true salvation and peace of Christ in the hearts of leaders and people. God promises that He will bring about His peace in history future when His kingdom shall extend from shore to shore around the world. All Christians should pray to that end; every other kind of peaceful resolution is just another Christmas truce.

Image Credits: 1 British and German troops (wikipedia.org) 2 The Christmas Truce (wikipedia.org) 3 Soccer (indpendent.uk) 4 Illustration (wikipedia.org)

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” —Prov. 29:2

—Kevin Turley, Landmark Events

Removal of the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington, 2023

he year was 1898; war with Spain loomed on the horizon. William McKinley, the last Union Civil War veteran elected to the presidency, realized the psychological and social wounds of the Civil War, which had ended thirty-three years earlier, still festered in some parts of the nation, especially the South. His predecessor had taken overt steps to ameliorate some of the continuing animosity between the sections by returning captured battle-flags and successfully courting the southern Democratic votes. McKinley went one better by calling for the nation to take better care of the graves of Confederate soldiers. He soon would also appoint ex-Confederate Generals to serve in high-ranking positions in the War with Spain.

President William McKinley (1843-1901)

Unveiling of the Confederate Monument, Arlington National, June 4, 1914

In that spirit of reconciliation, two years later, Congress authorized the Confederate section at Arlington Cemetery. Numerous reinterments followed, totaling eventually more than four hundred, who await Judgment Day, along with the more than 16,000 Union soldiers also buried there. In 1906, Secretary of War, Ohioan William Taft, approved a request by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commission Moses Ezekiel, one of the most famous sculptors in the world, to design the monument that would demarcate and celebrate the Confederate soldiers buried in their section.

President Howard Taft (1857-1930)

Wreath laying at Confederate Memorial Day Services by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1922

Ezekiel was the first Jewish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, and a member of the Corps when they fought in the Battle of New Market. After the War he moved to Italy to develop his skills, becoming an internationally renowned sculptor. Upon his death in 1917, Moses Ezekiel was buried next to the monument, desiring only the words recounting the service of his youth in the Civil War: Sergeant of Company C, Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute.

The magnificent bronze monument, with multiple symbolic devices, is topped by a woman representing the South, in her right hand a pruning hook resting on a plow stock in a gesture of peace and reconciliation. The thirty-two figures adorning the frieze around the monument include every sort of Southern person from the war period, including a black Confederate soldier. The Reverend Randolph McKim, a Confederate officer and chaplain in the war, submitted, in part, the following words:

Moses Ezekiel (1844-1917)

“NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD—NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK—NOT LURED BY AMBITION—OR GOADED BY NECESSITY—THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL—SACRIFICED ALL—DARED ALL—AND DIED”

Inscription as seen at the base of the north-facing frieze

President Taft spoke at the cornerstone dedication in 1912. His excellent speech is available for reading today. The unveiling took place in 1914 on Jefferson Davis’s birthday, overseen by President Woodrow Wilson who gave a heartfelt and magnanimous address to the thousands assembled. And so the monument has stood for 110 years, a symbol of reconciliation, respect, and honor. But no longer as of this week.

Frieze detail from the Arlington Monument

President Woodrow Wilson speaks at the 1914 unveiling ceremony

In 2021 Congress established “The Naming Commission” to devise a plan to “rid the military of its statues and monuments commemorating the Confederacy.” After renaming many military bases named after Confederate heroes, the Commission recommended that the Confederate Monument at Arlington be torn down, mandated to be accomplished before January 1. The destruction began today on orders of the Defense Department. Lawsuits by Heritage groups and others to stop the desecration have been set aside by the Army. Virginia Governor Younkin has conceded the action after protesting, along with forty Republican Congressmen who signed a letter demanding the “defense” secretary Lloyd Austin stop the proceedings—also ignored.

Naming Commission Chair, Michelle Howard

Monument foundations are laid, 1912

Beginning the monument’s removal, 2023

The Unity monument is joining the hundreds of other Confederate monuments around the country which have been dismantled or destroyed by the purveyors of a new narrative of American history based on Critical Race Theory and new revolutionary Marxist dogmas—substituting “racial oppression” for capitalism as the basis for all American history interpretation. This “march through the institutions of society” by revolutionaries is not new. The ideological overthrow of the Church, educational system, business, the military leadership, and politicians has been an ongoing enterprise for several generations and merely reflects the modern iteration of a spiritual war begun in Eden.

Removal of a Charlottesville Lewis and Clark / Sacagawea monument in 2021

When the rich and powerful declare courage, honor, sacrifice, and defense of home and hearth antiquated evidences of “patriarchal white supremacy” and fit only for destruction, we cannot stand by and hope the wave goes over our heads. We need to plant our banners, speak against the spirit of the age and show our children and grandchildren there are issues worth fighting and dying for. A monument may be a small thing in the larger scheme of the war, but the decision-makers need to know we’re still here and will continue the resistance, leaving ultimate outcomes to the Providence of God. Let us keep building monuments that are reminders of the truth that duty and obedience to God are sublime and eternal responsibilities.

Our Heart of American History tour guests at the Monument 30 days ago

Image Credits: 1 President William McKinley (wikipedia.org) 2 Monument Unveiling, 1914 (wikipedia.org) 3 President Howard Taft (wikipedia.org) 4 United Daughters of the Confederacy (wikipedia.org) 5 Moses Ezekiel (wikipedia.org) 6 North Frieze and Base (wikipedia.org) 7 Monument Frieze Detail (wikipedia.org) 8 Woodrow Wilson at Monument Dedication (wikipedia.org) 9 Naming Commission Chair, Michelle Howard (wikipedia.org) 10 Construction of Monument Foundation (wikipedia.org) 11 Monument Removal (thegatewaypundit.com) 12 Lewis & Clark Statue Removal (thegatewaypundit.com)

Attack on Pearl Harbor,
December 7, 1941

t was a quiet Sunday morning at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, home of America’s U.S. Pacific Fleet. At five minutes before 8:00, many of the 60,000 sailors and other military personnel stationed there were still in their bunks resting or else eating breakfast; a few were on duty, others just straggling in after a long night. What appeared to be another beautiful day in paradise would quickly turn into a nightmare as 183 Japanese aircraft arrived from over the mountains north of Pearl Harbor with a mission to destroy the U.S. Fleet. Bombs were dropped on fuel and ammunition dumps, buildings, and ships—even the newly-built hospital. Japanese pilots strafed everything in their path with wing-mounted machine guns, while others dropped torpedoes.

USS Arizona Burning in Pearl Harbor

The attack was a complete surprise for those stationed there. Some sailors went down with their ship while still asleep in their bunks. Some were trapped only to drown inside, while others had to choose between staying aboard a doomed ship or taking a chance by diving into a harbor aflame with burning fuel. It was a living hell.

But in true, heroic, American fashion, these brave men and women pulled together and soon ammunition was passed around and weapons lockers were broken open in order to fight back. Wounded were carried to safety and trapped servicemen rescued. Pearl Harbor is often remembered as a day of days, monumental as America’s provoked entry point into the Second World War. But on Sunday, December 7, 1941, it was down to how each man responded and “conducted himself in wartime”.

As explosions emanate from the USS Shaw sailors watch amid wrecked planes at the Ford Island seaplane base

The capsized minelayer USS Oglala is seen in the foreground

Below are compiled a few first-hand accounts from the survivors of this devastating attack. Let us never forget.

“I had just awakened and took a shower when I heard all these explosions at Pearl Harbor. I looked out the barracks window and just then a Jap Torpedo Bomber flew by with his torpedo. I yelled out to my buddies ‘the Japs are here’ and the response I got was, ‘go to bed you’re drunk.’

 

About that time a bomb hit the Central Mess Hall of our composite barracks. My buddy… and I asked ourselves where and what to do during war time. I decided I should be with my B-18 Bomber since I was the Crew Chief and Engineer Gunner. (We) cautiously proceeded to the Flight Line where—in between Jap strafing runs, and with many high-ranking officers’ help—we managed to tow my aircraft out onto the field for disbursement.

 

As the Japs flew by after leaving Pearl Harbor my buddy and I emptied our 45s at them—sometimes the gun got so hot we couldn’t hold it.

 

The next day they took all the flyable B-18 aircraft and crews and put us in one squadron. We called ourselves the suicide squadron for we went looking for the Jap fleet with two 30 Cal. machine guns per aircraft. Later on we flew dawn to dusk on submarine search and patrol. We then received B-17s and moved to Bellows Field and on to the Midway Battle.”

—As written on November 14, 1991, by Staff Sergeant Edward J. Dvorak, 72nd Bomb Sq. (H), stationed at Hickam Field on December 7, 1941

“I was over at Lt. Shea’s bachelor quarters making myself breakfast. Throwing out the egg shell, I noted three odd aircraft flying about. Then I noticed the red ball, and I knew right that minute that it was the day. Only wearing tennis shorts and sneakers, I ran about the buildings screaming, ’They are here!’ and then all hell started to break loose.

 

I made it back to the barracks just in time, to get some better wear… and just as I exited the barracks, they were hit.

 

From that moment on, running about trying to escape from being hit, I and two others started picking bodies to take to the hospital which just opened the day before. I was later hit, and knocked out for a while… I was bleeding from a hanging finger and also leg wounds. But did not turn myself in. I managed to put my index finger back together with masking tape and it healed after six weeks. The other wounds, I also took care of myself. Fearing that if I did turn myself in, I would be placed in a bed or whatever, and probably get hit again, because the Japanese did not honor the new hospital. Nevertheless, I did the best I could in trying to save those more unfortunate.

 

Later our group fought in the Midway Battle, and then to the South Pacific, till we were in the Guadalcanal Island.”

—Everest Capra, Army Medical Corps

“I am an on board survivor of the attack on the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941. Six men were trapped on the foremast; on the sky control platform one deck above the bridge, where the Admiral and the Captain were killed. We had no way off and were burning alive, when we saw a sailor on the USS Vestal. We waved at him and got his attention, and he threw us a line and we tied it off to a bigger line and proceeded to go hand over hand to the Vestal after we suffered burns. The Japanese were firing at us as well as the oil in the water under us was burning.

 

We all made it across the line because of the bravery of the seaman, Joe George. Two men died of their burns that day at the hospital and the four other men, Bruner, Lott, Rhiner, and myself lived. I was in the hospital for a year, but because of Joe George I went on to have a family. There are two of us alive today. We attended the 70th USS Arizona reunion in Hawaii.

 

Joe George was never awarded anything for his bravery and going against a direct order from his Captain, who wanted to pull away from the Arizona and leave us all to die. He is no longer with us, but I believe his widow, in his memory, should be awarded the Navy Cross.”

—Donald Stratton

Image Credits: 1 USS Arizona Burning (wikipedia.org) 2 USS Shaw Explosion (wikipedia.org) 3 The Oglala capsizes (wikipedia.org)