Arizona survivors bid teary goodbye
| • | Special report: Pearl Harbor Plus Sixty Years |
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Arizona survivors gathered for a farewell banquet at the Hale Koa in Waikiki last night, waving 6-inch American flags to music by the Navy band, swearing in new officers, trading final war stories and shedding a few more tears.
"That's OK — know just how you feel," retired Master Chief Petty Officer Glenn Lane called to a speaker whose voice cracked a little while reciting a poem about military veterans. "I get chills up my back every time I hear the 'Star-Spangled Banner.' "
Lane, 83, is one of an ever-shrinking crowd of sailors who escaped the USS Arizona during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and is still alive to tell about it. He was on the deck trying to fight fires when the last bomb fell.
"Blown off," Lane said. "Most of us who survived were either blown off or weren't aboard. I know of three guys who were AWOL — with girls in Honolulu that night. We covered for them."
A doctor told Lane that being blown into the water was the luckiest thing that could have happened to him. The burns that covered his skin were only a few layers deep, leaving a tender layer of flesh that Lane says is sensitive to the sun six decades later.
Some were not so lucky, he says, pointing to a man whose escape was not as rapid, and whose scars are numerous and deep.
The Arizona survivors association has shrunk so much in recent years that it decided to admit "friends" as well as survivors and relatives. Lane sat across the table from one such friend: Ross Dodge, who served with Lane later in his career. Lane said the young blood will help the organization survive.
Beverly Lane, his wife of 59 years, sat next to him. She had been with his parents on Christmas Eve 1941, when they finally got word he was among the injured. They had heard shortly after the Dec. 7 attack that the Arizona had sunk.
"Went down with all hands, according to one radio account they'd heard," Lane said. "But my Dad knew that wasn't right. He said there would always be some that got off, and if he knew his son, Glenn would be one of them."
Lane had dog-paddled through the oily water and climbed aboard the Nevada, which was then hit by the second wave of Japanese fighter planes. He eventually was carried off that battleship by corpsmen who wrapped him in a warm blanket of morphine before transporting him to the hospital ship.
Lane, of Oak Harbor, Wash., has attended many of the reunions at Pearl Harbor on the five and zero years. Next year he'll attend in Tucson.
After that, he said, he just can't be sure.
