Stephen Shemelynec US Army

The details are sometimes fuzzy.  After all, it was six decades ago and Steve Shemelynec was barely 19 years old when his world turned upside down. Mr. Shemelynec says it can be difficult for him to talk about December 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, where he was stationed with the US Army.  Although he's been interviewed about his experiences at least a dozen times and he's had 60 years to mull over his roll in that fateful day, Mr. Shemelynec says, "I don't volunteer much information.  It's emotional.  It chokes you up." And yet, in an effort to make sure Americans don't forget the almost 3,000 lives lost in the attack, Mr. Shemelynec Swallows the lump in his throat and shares his story. It starts out much like and other tale of late 1930s innocence.  Mr. Shemelynec was raised on a milk farm near Johnstown, PA.  At 17, he and a friend decided to hitchhike their way across the country.  Somehow, the two were separated and Shemelynec ended up alone in Seattle in October 1939. "It started to get cold up there, so I decided to join the Army," he joked.  After his mother gave permission for him to join  because he was underage  a recruiter asked Mr. Shemelynec to look at a map and choose his duty station. I saw a nice big palm tree there and I said, 'That's where I want to go.' I had never seen a palm tree before," he said, adding that he was sent to Hawaii and assigned to the Pearl Harbor Defense Unit that was armed with anti-aircraft guns. Each day was spent training on guns, marching and moving.  On days off, he relaxed on the beach and watched teachers make their way by ship to the island for summer vacation. Much of Mr. Shemelynec's time was also spent waiting for 1941 and the end of a two-year tour of duty that would route him back to the United States.  On the morning of December 7, 1941, Staff Sgt. Shemelynec was in his barracks room reading a magazine when those plans suddenly changed. "I heard what sounded like thunder outside, I said, 'It doesn't thunder here,'" he said.   "Then someone ran through the barracks yelling, "The Japanese are here!" Mr. Shemelynec said the men ran outside to see their small area being attacked by Japanese planes.  Within a few minutes, Mr. Shemelynec was at his assigned position at the mouth of Pearl Harbor, where he was to search through telescopes for incoming ships and airplanes.  That day there would be plenty of planes  360 fighters, dive bombers and horizontal bombers  coming at the island "like a tidal wave." "That's when we were under the real thunder there," Mr. Shemelynec said, describing shells and shrapnel raining down.  "These planes were flying around like hornets, shooting and firing every which way.  Everybody was scared.  If anybody said they weren't scared, they were a damn fool." When the attack was over, Mr. Shemelynec said they assumed the Japanese would invade overnight, so they dug trenches and put up barbed wire.  If a resident turned on a light during blackout time at night, a soldier fired through the window to shoot it out. As soon as he could, Mr. Shemelynec wrote to his family.  "It probably took 10 days to get there.  I know they were worried back home," he said. And although his duty time was up, he stayed in the Army and spent another year-and-a-half in Hawaii. "At that time, they just kept you on.  You didn't think about going home", he said. After being transferred to France for the tail end of the war, he got out of the Army.  But after a brief stint working for the MGM movie studios, Mr. Shemelynec re-enlisted because military pay had been raised.  In total, he spent 22 years in the Army, retiring as a warrant officer.  He went on to work for the federal government at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. and later started his own microscope business in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area. He said it took more than a year for Pearl Harbor to recover from the attack.  More military members were shuttled in to prepare for war.  Most soldiers got one day off a month from "military life" to relax. To this day, he marvels that the Japanese didn't bomb storage tanks of ship fuel stored on the island.  If they had, it might have extended the war, he said. "Nobody ever thought this attack would happen," Mr. Shemelynec said.  "The Japanese murdered our people.  They didn't declare war, they just came in and shot us up." Although he's lucky he was unscathed, with only about three members of his unit killed December 7, Mr. Shemelynec said he doesn't regret his decision to choose Hawaii as his duty station.  He sports a Pearl Harbor veteran license plate on his car.  He proudly shows off a letter from former President George Bush congratulating him on making it to the 60th anniversary of the attack.  Ten years ago, he traveled back to Pearl Harbor to tour a cemetery for fallen soldiers. Now Mr. Shemelynec is treasurer for the Howard Brannon chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, a Valley group that speaks out to make sure no one forgets what happened December 7, 1941. "Just like President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, it was a Day of Infamy, and it should be a mark of preparedness," he said.  "We never know.  We should be constantly on alert for terrorism."

Information provided by Stephen Shemelynec.