Attack on Pearl Harbor is remembered 82 years later

By: TONY MARKS
Editor

“Remember Pearl Harbor,” Ralph Bennett asked in an article that appeared in the December 1991 issue of Reader’s Digest, which also appeared in the December 5, 1991, edition of the Ville Platte Gazette.
Bennett went on, “There is no way to forget it. The Japanese attack on the U.S. Fleet, December 7, 1941, was one of the most profound examples of utter surprise in military history. It was also one of the great rarities of human existence - a moment when an entire people witness a turning point, both as individuals and as a nation. All Americans then living and old enough to reason remembered where they were and when they heard the news and marked their days in some way before and after Pearl Harbor.”
Three months after the attack, on February 5, 1942, the Gazette published a letter from Yves Dupre to his mother, Mrs. Eraste Dupre, of Ville Platte, that described a first-hand account of the tragic events.
Dupre was a 1927 graduate of Ville Platte High School and was a petty officer in the Navy in December 1941.
He wrote the following:
“Dear Mom:
This is my first letter since the start of the war. Mom, that fateful Sunday morning held an aweful surprise for us. I was home, and we were just sitting for breakfast when we heard the roar of the planes overhead. I took Judy and Rhea (the former Rhea Ardoin, of Ville Platte) brought Danny out to watch what we first thought was an army sham battle. I’m telling you we had a grandstand view.
Some of the planes flew so low over the house I could easily have reached them with a rock. It must have taken five minutes before I realized something was wrong, and then not until I had seen two enemy planes fall in flames.
Hatfield, the boy who delivered your last year’s Christmas present, was spending the weekend at home. We put our uniforms on and headed for the dock. What normally was a twelve minute walk we made in about three minutes. While waiting for a motor launch to take us to our respective ships, we were twice sent to the ditches for protection against enemy fire. The ride, 15 minutes from the dock, was the most tense moments of my life. I often wondered what my reaction would be under fire. It surprised me because I had no fear, and the ‘let come what might’ attitude prevailed. Not only with me, but also the four shipmates who were in the open boat with me.
We joked and laughed the whole trip. The sights I experienced on that trip is something I’ll never forget and hope to never see again. Our military loss, as (Secretary of the Navy Frank) Knox says, is small and matters little in the long run. But to know that most of the boys and shipmates who lost their lives never knew why - never had a chance - is what hurts. Nothing short of such an attack in peace time could have given us more courage and determination to collect our debt with, as President (Franklin) Roosevelt says, compound interest. Thank God I’m in the service, and my only hope is that I can stand on the deck and see Tokyo burn.
This is your third war, Mom, and like the others you’ll celebrate the armistice of this one. Take good care of yourself and don’t worry about me - I’ll make a date with you for Christmas of this year.
Your son,
Yves.”
Another Evangeline Parish resident, Bervic Celestine, of Mamou, also had a bird’s eye view of the attack and was on hand for a parish observance of the 50th anniversary.
In a December 8, 1991, article of the Gazette, Celestine said, “No matter what I tell you about my experience, you will never have the less idea of what it would entail. The only way would you know about it is you would have had to been there yourself.”
Celestine’s comments came during the anniversary gathering.
According to the article, Celestine was 20 years old on that December morning and was serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS California that was docked at Pearl Harbor. “It’s impossible to express the feeling that runs through a man’s mind when he’s actually confronted with combat face-to-face,” he said 32 years ago.
Celestine went on to say, “For many years, I could never understand why yesterday’s hero was today’s forgotten man. But, one thing I know for sure that Americans died on land, on sea, and in the air. They died from the North, from the South, from the East, and from the
West, from every prairie and valley in America. They died. The rich and the poor, they all died. They died together, so that America could remain free. They fought a good fight. They kept the faith.”
Seven years before the anniversary gathering here in Evangeline Parish, Celestine was the subject of an article that appeared in the December 6, 1984, edition of the Gazette.
In that article, Celestine recalled, “At 7:55 a.m., one of my comrades came to me and said, ‘Celestine, we are at war.’ I knew it was real from the expression on his face.”
“I looked through the porthole, and, when I saw all those ‘red balls’ under those (airplane) wings, I knew they weren’t ours ... I thought that was the end of it.”
Celestine, back in 1984, said it was hard to describe the feelings he had at the time. He could, however, still “hear” such things as the repeated announcement made on the ship speaker system, “All hands man battle stations ... this is not a drill ...”
The Mamou native took his place as a loader on a five-inch anti-aircraft gun and - more than likely with some trepidation - went to work along with the rest of the crew in defense measures that would prove to be in vain.
According to the 1984 article, when two torpedoes hit the ship, Celestine recalled it “rocked like a leaf on the water.” The total crew of the California numbered some 1,500, but it happened that 75 percent of them were on shore that morning, according to Celestine.
“They caught us off guard,” he said.
Years after the attack, Celestine always recalled the gunfire and explosions that was all around him on that “day that will live in infamy,” as President Roosevelt called it.
“I didn’t get one scratch,” Celestine said in 1984. “I wonder many days now how I didn’t.”
Later in the article, Celestine said he didn’t realize the historical significance of the attack at the time. He put the day in perspective years later and said Pearl Harbor taught the United States to “always be prepared ... we never can afford to go to sleep again.”
Another thing he believed it resulted in was bringing people that were otherwise divided together in a common cause, both on a national level and especially on that Hawaiian harbor in the Pacific on Dec. 7, 1941.
“You couldn’t find an atheist anywhere on that island that morning,” he said. “We were all brothers.”