Ralph Lindenmeyer US Navy Ford Island |
Ralph Lindenmeyer was a Navy machinist mate third class on Ford Island and recalls that at about 7:55 a.m. that morning, he was preparing to go to Waikiki Beach to go swimming with his cousin. "When the planes came in, I was in a barracks on Ford Island, a second story barracks. I went down to the main floor. They wouldn't let us out because the Japanese were bombing at intervals so we had to wait for an interval before they would let us out to go to our battle stations," Lindenmeyer recounts. "But the building began to shake - it was a two-story cement building - it shook so much. We were down on a lower floor, but we thought the building was going to collapse right around us. We thought that we'd all be killed and trapped in the rubble of the building," When they were finally able to get out, Lindenmeyer raced for his battle station at the propeller shop. "When I got there, the door was locked and I had to go down to the other hangar and I joined in with what they were doing there - getting the planes out of the hangar and putting good planes in one section and bad planes in another section (the planes that were damaged) - putting out fires and doing various things down there to safeguard aircraft," he explained. Later when Lindenmeyer went to the mess hall, he found it to be a chaotic scene with wounded servicemen everywhere. "They were full of oil, they were burned, they were injured, and they were in terrible shape. It just brings tears to my eyes to even think about the shape they were in," said Lindenmeyer. "Then one time, as I was standing there, a hospital corpsman came out and said to one of the guys, "you're next son" and he said, 'take the man next to me, he's hurt worse than me'," the Pearl Harbor survivor related. Three days after December 7, Lindenmeyer was sent to Maui where he worked as a control tower operator for about six months. He was later assigned to Midway Island just after the Battle of Midway where he remained for about 10 months. Returning to the states, he went to school, got married and then went to Guadalcanal. Lindenmeyer confesses that it was quite awhile before he was able to talk about the event of Dec. 7. "The first five years or so after the war, I hadn't even told my family about anything. I just couldn't do it," he said. "I think others were in the same boat. I didn't have the experiences that others had, but I had some very, very bad memories of people who got shot, who got killed," he continued. "In war, we don't know who lives and who dies. We don't know if it's just the luck of the draw or what it is, but that's the way it is," he reflected. After he left the Navy, Lindenmeyer became a newspaper printer and free lance writer and says, "I lived happily ever after." He assisted Disney with the "Pearl Harbor" epic by getting some of the Pearl Harbor survivors together and also reading and critiquing the script. Every December 7, the survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack returns for the memorial service at the Arizona. "The Pearl Harbor survivors are like a family. You have a camaraderie that is unequaled anywhere. We come out here to memorialize those who didn't make it," he explained. Lindenmeyer said that he was "real pleased" with the film "Pearl Harbor." "It's a love story, it's a wonderful love story, a very emotional love story," he said. "The actors and actresses were great. I can also tell you that the ultimate of this movie would be a continuation of the legacy of December 7. The main purpose of this movie as far as the Pearl Harbor survivors like myself are concerned - not its real accuracy to a pinpoint - but accurate enough to continue the legacy of Dec. 7, 1941," he continued. |
Information provided by Ralph Lindenmeyer. |
Ralph Lindenmeyer (L) and James Bounds (R), stand near the USS Oklahoma pedestal at the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fountain. The survivors were at Pearl Harbor for the premier of the film "Pearl Harbor" |
