Steve Warren US Navy

Steve Warren (Middle), his skipper and another sailor, stand near a Japanese plane shot down during the December 7, 1941 attack on Hawaii.

Information provided by Steve Warren.

Steve Warren displays a case full of memorabilia from the attack.  In the center is the telegram his parents received from him a few days after the attack.  Surrounding the telegram are a bullet that landed at his fee, shrapnel from Japanese bombs and a piece of a Japanese plane that was shot down.

Most of all, Steve Warren remembers the dying men he tried to help as Japanese planes roared overhead, bombing and strafing Hickam Field near the mouth of Pearl Harbor 60 years ago. "There were two or three of them I'll never forget as long as I live.  One of them had his guts shot out.  He was dictating a letter to his family as he was dying." Steve helped another dying man whose face was burned beyond recognition.  His hands also were burned.  Steve knew that the man, who had no dog tags, would never be identified after he died, so he put a pencil in the man's hand and asked him to write his name on a piece of paper.  When he finished, Steve said, "That's real good.  Now do it once again."  Steve couldn't make out a single letter. Like many at Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning, Steve was asleep in his bunk when the bombing woke him up.  He and the rest of a small crew had arrived at Pearl Harbor two days earlier on a wooden yacht sent to Hawaii for refitting as a patrol craft.  It was tied up to a bigger steel ship at Bishop Point next to Hickam Field. Steve remembers rushing from below onto the deck of his small ship and making eye contact with the tail gunner of a Japanese plane flying by on its way to attack Hickam Field.  "I jumped back down there." The Japanese weren't shooting at his ship, but were wreaking havoc on nearby Hickam Field, destroying planes and hangars, and killing and wounding 492 soldiers. Steve remembers a stray bullet hitting a steel bulkhead a foot away from him and dropping to the deck.  He picked the bullet up and still has it among his memorabilia. He remembers hauling ammunition from below decks on a nearby ship whose gun was empty.  With his arms full of shells, he fell down a flight of steps, injuring both knees.  They still bother him today. When the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Steve Warren was 20 years old.  He was a poor Texas farm boy who had joined the Navy on August 1940 because it paid $21 a month. In boot camp, Warren had a bad reaction to shots the men received and went to the hospital.  The delay caused him to graduate with a later unit.  Many of the men from his original boot-camp company were sent to the battleship Arizona.  "I never saw them again.  The Japanese blew up the Arizona on December and 1,178 men died on it." Steve remained on the small patrol craft for another few months; much of it spent doing submarine patrols in the Hawaiian Islands. Later, he was transferred to Palmyra Island, a small coral atoll south of Hawaii, where he served for most of 1943 and part of 1944.  Because the US was focused on Europe, Pacific forces always faced shortages of supplies, equipment and weapons. Steve then transferred back to Pearl Harbor where he was a chief storekeeper working in provisions.  Then he became chief storekeeper and warrant officer on a newly built attack transport, the USS Clarendon. Steve sailed all over the Pacific on the Clarendon.  Although it was never hit by enemy fire, the Clarendon came under 130 Japanese air raids, was shelled by Japanese shore batteries several times, was in fleets that were attacked by kamikaze planes and was under attack at least five times by Japanese submarines. The ship sailed in a convoy through a Japanese mine field for two days in the Yellow Sea. "After Pearl Harbor I was angry with the Japanese.  As the war progressed, my anger grew as we began learning more about the atrocities they committed.  In the Pacific, it became a battle to the death.  They just didn't surrender." Although he saw a couple of men go insane from fear and battle fatigue, Steve said he never saw any real cowardice on the part of US soldiers of sailors. Steve doesn't consider himself a hero.  "I did the best I could.  I didn't do anything brave or heroic.  It was just a job.  The fact is, all the true heroes are in cemeteries." "Tom Borkaw overdid it with his book 'The Greatest Generation', which lauded the World War II generation.  We weren't anything special". But, Steve says that war made him grow up fast.  "You grew from boy to man pretty quick." When Steve got out of the Navy in 1946, like a lot of other veterans, he went to college on the GI bill.  "I wasn't' smart, but I studied hard".  He earned a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in accounting.  "Most of the guys I knew, they give it all they had." Steve worked as a certified public accountant in Texas until retiring to Rapid City in 1993, where he and his wife live in a large home on a pine-covered hill. Today, Steve sees both similarities and differences between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11th terrorist attacks. "I see the United States waking up to a danger and becoming more unified.  I see the attacks as cowardly acts in both cases." But, Steve says he doesn't see widespread sacrifice yet, like there was in World War II.  "I don't see a unified war effort yet". Steve said when he went home to Texas on his first leave in 1944; he discovered that his parents didn't have towels or even bed sheets. Today, Steve is state chairman and past president of the South Dakota Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.  The association's motto is "Remember Pearl Harbor  Keep America Alert". "We preached that ever since December 7, 1941, we have not been heard".  Yet, he is optimistic about the United States' ability to defeat the terrorist threat.  "I've got a lot of faith in the younger generation."