These were men who had also seen the war's beginning, for America, at Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 — bookend witnesses to the deadliest conflict in human history.

Raymond Beck, 83, of Penn Valley, Calif., is one such person. And although no one apparently ever compiled a definitive list of those who were at both points in history, Beck may be the only person still alive who can make the claim.

Beck's position for the historic moment of surrender was a good one behind the officer of the deck. And although he would spend most of the next six decades trying to forget World War II, one memory of the occasion is indelibly etched in Beck's mind.

"The Japanese minister came over on a high line," he said. "You know, one of these chairs that you send across from ship to ship."

Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, the principal surrender signatory for Japan, arrived near the Missouri aboard the destroyer Lansdowne dressed in top hat, striped pants and morning coat. Along with the remainder of the Japanese delegation, Shigemitsu transferred to one of the Missouri's motor launches for the final leg.

But because he had a wooden leg and couldn't negotiate the series of steel rungs on the side of the destroyer, Shigemitsu suffered the added indignity of being hoisted from the Lansdowne in a boatswain's chair attached to a line and pulley.

Building the chair

That memory sticks in Beck's head because, as a shipfitter first class, he had been assigned the task of building the seat on which Shigemitsu bounced about that day.

"I think it took about four hours to make," said Beck, who witnessed America's entry into World War II at Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row aboard the USS Tennessee. "The chair was aluminum. It had to be lightweight. Just for the fun of it, I put a little holder on it for a buggy whip."

Shigemitsu's discomfort didn't end once he reached the "Mighty Mo," according to Beck. As he began to raise his arm to salute, Beck recalled a Marine guard whacking the minister's wrist with a rifle barrel.

"He wasn't going to take a salute from him," said Beck, who went on to serve in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Ray Thompson, who died in 2001, was aboard the USS Maryland during the Pearl Harbor attack and aboard the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered. Advertiser library photo | June 13, 1998

Meanwhile, another of the war's bookend witnesses, Chief Petty Officer Ray Thompson, then 34, stood in formation with his men at the stern of the ship and craned his neck. Unlike Beck, Thompson's vantage point was not the best.

"I'd never seen Douglas MacArthur before," recalled Thompson back in 1998 in an Advertiser interview. "And actually, I saw very little of him that day.

"The actual ceremony didn't last long. I don't believe we were in formation for more than an hour or so. And then, everybody just went to their quarters, and how those other people left is beyond me. I didn't see any of it," he said.

Thompson, who died in April 2001, survived every World War II battle and kamikaze attack in which the Missouri was involved. But he remembered the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, aboard the USS Maryland as the most harrowing experience of his military life.

Neither Beck nor Thompson had any desire to return to Pearl Harbor following the war. By contrast, George Schuette of Charlotte, N.C., returned to Pearl Harbor and the decks of the Missouri more than once.

A Dec. 7 irony

Of all the war's bookend witnesses, Schuette's story may be the most ironic. He entered the fray dodging machine gun fire at Pearl Harbor as a 23-year-old electrician's mate aboard the cruiser USS San Francisco, serving under Rear Adm. Daniel Callaghan.

Although his ship made it through the Dec. 7 attack unharmed, it was heavily damaged during a fierce battle with the Japanese fleet in November 1942, in which Callaghan and a number of other officers and crew were killed.

Toward the end of the war, Schuette was assigned to America's newest battleship, the Missouri, serving under Capt. William Callaghan, younger brother of Schuette's skipper on the San Francisco.

On the day of the Japanese surrender, the Missouri had changed command, and Capt. Stuart "Sunshine" Murray was in charge.

Schuette had the honor of setting up the veranda-deck microphone on which Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, MacArthur, spoke the most remembered words of the day, "May peace be now restored to the world."

On June 13, 1990, Schuette stepped aboard the ship for the last time while it was moored at the Long Beach Naval Station, shortly before Missouri left for action in the Gulf War.

He died eight years later — 57 years to the day after the war began for him and millions of other Americans — on Dec. 7, 1998.