Remembrance

In June 1940, Ray Parnell was an 18-year-old from Dallas, Texas who joined the Marines to see the world.

Within two years, Parnell was stationed in Hawai’i, where he went through a life-changing experience he has thought about each year for the past 60 years.

Parnell lived through the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, having witnessed the death and destruction.

He said the event had forged in him survival skills that helped keep him stay alive during battles in the Pacific and helped him deal with the adversities of life.

Parnell, a 76-year-old Kapa’a resident and a 20-year Marine Corps veteran, is believed to be the only Pearl Harbor survivor from the military living on Kaua’i.

Because Parnell lost his right foot to diabetes 1 1/2 years go and can’t move around easily, he won’t be joining other attack survivors on Oahu today to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing.

Instead, at 7:55 a.m. today, when the attack began 59 years ago and crippled America’s Pacific fleet, Parnell said he would reflect quietly on the event from his home and remembered those who lost their lives.

During the attack, eight of nine of the Pacific Fleet’s battleships were severely damaged, including the U.S.S. Arizona which sunk with 1,101 servicemen aboard.

Destroyers and cruisers were also damaged, as were support vessels; more than 160 planes were lost and 159 planes were damaged, along with hangars and other facilities.

The Navy lost 1,999 sailors, the Army lost more than 200 soldiers and the Marines lost more than 100 men.

After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas Texas in 1940, Parnell joined the Marines because he admired what that branch of the service stood for – honor and loyalty.

After training and deployment to Honolulu in 1940, he was assigned to an admiral aboard the U.S.S. Argonne, which was moored to the same dock as the battleship U.S.S. Pennsylvania.

When the attack began, Parnell was in the lower decks of the Argonne and “had just gotten out of the shower and was ready to go to Honolulu for a date that morning.”

To his surprise, he said, “somebody came running down one of the ladders, saying the Germans (because Germany was at war) are bombing us.”

Men scrambled to battle stations when general quarters were sounded, and the Argonne came under strafing, Parnell said.

Parnell said he went to the top deck and saw “Japanese planes coming out of the rising sun.” “They were right over Pearl Harbor and the bombs dropped and the strafing occurred. It seemed like it would last forever,” Parnell said.

Because ammunition for large guns was put storage in preparation for an inspection, sailors and soldiers aboard the ship and other ships in the harbor weren’t able to repel the attack, Parnell said.

“The biggest weapon we had on board was a 50-millimeter gun,” he said.

Parnell said the most horrendous sight for him was that of military personnel “screaming and yelling for help” as they jumped off stricken battleships by Ford Island and found themselves in “water that was aflame from oil and gasoline” discharged from damaged vessels.

Military personnel couldn’t help them more because they all had jobs to do during the attack, Parnell said.

Because communication systems were affected during the attack, Parnell ran counter attack messages from ship to ship along the shoreline in the harbor.

Parnell said he and 40 other marines aboard the Argonne “were all angry about what was happening, but we really didn’t know what hit us . It seemed to happen so fast.”

The sinking of the U.S.S. Arizona had special meeting for him because a marine on board had graduated with him from the same high school and had enlisted in the Marines with him, Parnell said.

“It shocked me, but I couldn’t dwell on it,” Parnell said. “Marines were given orders and they were expected to follow them. That is the way we lived day to day. I couldn’t let my emotions get in the way.”

After Pearl Harbor, Parnell saw combat in the Pacific, including beach assaults of Saipan and Tinian in the western Pacific near the end of the war against Japan.

“I had my brushes with death out there. I seen my share of killing,” he said.

Parnell almost didn’t make it back home.

Following a battle on Saipan, a woman and child walked toward him and other marines to surrender, Parnell said.

She reached under her clothes for a grenade and tossed it at the marines. The explosion killed her and injured some soldiers, Parnell said.

Recent television footage of Taliban suicide attacks “brought back all those memories” Parnell said.

Parnell said the Sept. 11 terrorist attack shows that America didn’t learn its lesson from the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor 59 years ago. “We must always be prepared for anything, he said.

Of his wartime experience, he says he hasn’t harbored ill feelings against the “Japanese or Germans because I am the kind of guy who lives and let lives.”

Parnell retired as a master sergeant in Marine Corps in December 1959 and worked as a government employee in Washington state for 15 years before retiring.

Parnell said being a marine has been among the highest achievements in his life.

“What happened in Pearl Harbor taught me how survive and face whatever life tosses at you,” Parnell said. “I am older, but I think I am still tough. That is what the Marines taught me.”