Pearl Harbor's voices of the past

MARYSVILLE — The day Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, U.S. Army Pvt. Walt Bailey ate breakfast, returned to his barracks at Fort Shafter and began weeding a small flower garden.

He saw puffs of black and white smoke rising above the harbor 21/2 miles away.

Bailey, 90, of Marysville, has told his story about the attack on Pearl Harbor many times in 68 years.

In 2007, library manager Terry Beck helped him make it history.

Beck and other workers at Sno-Isle Libraries in 2007 and 2008 interviewed and recorded about three dozen local World War II veterans as part of a nationwide project to preserve veterans' memories.

Beck is the manager of adult and teen services for Sno-Isle. Back in 2007, the libraries put out a call for World War II veterans to tell their stories. They hoped to get a handful of people, Beck said.

The response was overwhelming.

“These men finally wanted to come forth and tell their stories,” Beck said. “It was remarkable. People who had been even prisoners of war could go back and talk about it like it happened yesterday. It's still that fresh in their minds.”

In some cases, veterans' children contacted Beck, hoping parents who had been unwilling to share their experiences with family might open up to a stranger.

Even though many veterans talked about similar wartime events, it was never the same story told twice, Beck said. Some memories were funny. Others touching. And some were so difficult to put into words they had been kept buried until then.

“It's hard, you know, somebody your father's age sitting across from you and crying,” Beck said.

She recorded a man who was in the U.S. Coast Guard and a man who was in the Polish Air Force. Another veteran fought for freedom in his native land, the former Yugoslavia. A group of women from Whidbey Island talked about what it was like on the homefront.

Bailey happened to be in Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941, the day many people of his generation know as the day that changed America.

He picked Hawaii for the climate. It was a beautiful place, he said last week at his house on Marysville's Whiskey Ridge, the place he has called home since 1950.

Bailey leafed through a scrapbook his family put together for his 85th birthday. Photos and memorabilia chronicle almost nine decades of his life. There's a bright postcard with a view of Hanauma Bay. It reminded Bailey of a time he almost got bitten by an eel. He placed it on the table, near the driver's license he got when he returned home from the war.

Before the war, Bailey worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps and was an avid outdoorsman throughout his life. He led the effort to build his namesake Walt Bailey Trail off the Mountain Loop Highway.

He also helped start Snohomish County Fire District 22, serving the Getchell area, and was a firefighter there for many years.

During his wartime service in Hawaii, Bailey was part of a searchlight and radar unit. His job was to spot airplanes and to illuminate them for gun batteries. “This was highly secretive stuff, the radar,” he recalled. “The Japanese didn't have it, you know.”

Later the Army sent him to dog-training school. He learned how to handle attack dogs used to protect the radar technology. Bailey still has the faded document certifying him as a military dog trainer.

Parts of Bailey's story stayed with Beck. That was true of every war story she heard. The veterans didn't just remember what happened during that dark time, Beck said. They relived it.

Hearing those stories helped her better understand the magnitude of human loss during World War II.

The project also helped Beck understand her own father, 85, also a veteran.

Beck's parents now live in Florida.

“I grew up knowing what he did in the war, but I didn't really understand what he could have seen that has changed him,” she said about her dad.

One day, a man came in to interview. His wartime duties were similar to Beck's father's job. Both men had served as ball-turret gunners on B-24 bombers. Their job was to fire machine guns from a glass sphere on the bomber's belly.

Beck learned how easily and often death came for ball-turret gunners. She saw her dad differently.

“I had never understood before why he couldn't really talk about combat. But boy, do I understand now,” she said.

Beck hopes to make all the veteran recordings available in podcasts soon. For now, people can access eight of the audio stories posted on the Sno-Isle Web site.

Bailey said he's glad his war story will live on. His wife of many years, Verla, had other thoughts, too.

“I think he just likes to talk,” she said.

Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452, kyefimova@heraldnet.com.