Two articles from the Door County Advocate which relate eyewitness accounts of the Pearl Harbor bombing
[From May 15, 1942; one word is censored as Xxx, in plural as Xxxx. The original and uncensored versions are available in the links beneath the articles.]
Eyewitness' Account Told of Pearl Harbor Bombing
With the arrival of Leonard Potier, son of Mr. and Mrs. Leo Potier of Nasewaupee, Sunday for a furlough until next Tuesday, Door county had a direct eyewitness of its own of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Leonard, who has served 5 years in the navy and is a metalsmith, confirmed much of the following data given in an interview with Mrs. Harrison. He has been at Mare Island, Calif., about a month and doesn't know where his boat will be going from there. His rank is first class petty officer.
At the time of the Xxx bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was on a tender only 200 yards from the battleship Arizona that was blown up.
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Mrs. Frank J. Deutsch has received word from her brother, Joseph Spawn, formerly of South Sturgeon Bay township and for the last 30 years of Lidgerwood, No. Dak., telling how his daughter, Mrs. Harrison, was one of thousands of persons who went through the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Harrison was sent back to the States with her two children, while her husband, who is in the navy, went on war duty with the fleet.
The Lidgerwood Monitor published a graphic account by Mrs. Harrison of the Pearl harbor bombing.
"We were eating breakfast when I saw a shadow pass across the table. The next moment there was a deafening roar of an airplane motor and It startled me. I remarked to my husband that it was flying awfully low. He didn't say anything, and in a few moments there came the noise of explosions," Mrs. Harrison related.
"We ran outside. Everyone in the neighborhood was out, watching. There were quite a few planes, all right. Some were coming down out of the clouds. others were circling around, dropping bombs. My husband left at once to get back to his ship. I was on my own.
"It was no time at all before some of our planes were in the air, taking on the Xxx planes. Our aircraft guns went into action as fast as our men could get to their posts, and believe me, they didn't waste any time doing that.
"One Xxx plane flew under the electric wires and a neighbor lady told me the pilot was shaking his fist at the people watching the plane. They did machinegun the highways and our boys had to crawl on their stomachs to avoid being hit while they were getting back to their ships.
"A piece of shrapnel struck my husband's cap but he wasn't hurt. I have it now, as a sort of souvenir.
"The attack started at a quarter of eight and in three-hours the military authorities had evacuated the women and children to safer parts of the city, in the hills. We grabbed a few blankets and some food and went by bus. It is not true that the Xxxx attacked the refugee busses; neither is it true that when we returned to the city they had moved into our homes; that did not happen.
"It is true, however, that any Japanese residents who spoke out of turn to any of our men were well taken care of—and quickly.
"After the first raids all sections of the city were patrolled by our army and navy men.
"It is my firm belief that the Japanese will never take Honolulu. They'll never get in there again. There was a rumor that the Xxxx would attack again about the middle of April, but we'll be ready for them in time. The reason people are being evacuated from Honolulu is not because of the danger of attack but because of the need for supplies and men on the ships which otherwise would have to carry food."
Mrs. Harrison said a few of the Japanese pilots whose planes were shot down were identified by rings they wore as graduates of the high schools in Honolulu.
She described as a "myth" the story that Xxx fifth-columnists had cut a huge arrow in a cane field to direct their planes to military targets.
"Our house was about a half block from that cane field," she said, "and there is absolutely nothing to the story that an arrow was cut in It."
Mrs. Harrison was reluctant to answer questions, and admitted that there are things she could tell when the war is over, that she cannot tell now, because of possible aid to the enemy.
"My husband has pounded it into my head so long and so often, to say absolutely nothing to anyone except what I have seen myself, that I just naturally don't talk," she said. "He never told me anything that has happened, and all I know is what I saw, and I can't tell half of that."
Mr. Harrison is a machinist on a mine-layer. They had lived in Honolulu three years.
Mrs. Harrison's parting words carried this warning: "We'll repay the Xxxx for everything they have done!"
[From the December 6, 1966 Door County Advocate]
PEARL HARBOR "fireworks" in the top picture were viewed by Leonard Potier from his battle station on the USS Argonne, designated by the arrow in the lower picture. The arrow in the top picture shows what Potier believes is part of the Argonne's superstructure, protected by the huge floating crane which stood between the Argonne and "battleship row" on Ford Island which dominates the picture.
Leonard Potier had ringside Seat at Pearl Harbor attack
By JIM ROBERTSON
Slogan and song reminded Americans to "Remember Pearl Harbor" after the fateful Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, and Wednesday, 25 years later, it will be especially remembered, by Leonard Potier in particular.
He was there, with what he remembers as the "best seat in the house." As the supervisor of sky lookouts on the USS Argonne, a navy repair ship docked at Pearl Harbor, he was right in the middle of the attack, so close to the attacking Japanese torpedo bombers that "I could see the expression on the faces of the pilots."
Now a maintenance man at Southern Door high school and a beef and hog farmer who lives just west of the airport on County Trunk C, Potier remembers the nightmare all starting about 8 o'clock on a quiet, normal Sunday morning. He had just washed out a pair of dungarees and was sitting down shirtless to read the morning paper.
"All of a sudden I heard the alarm and somebody yelling, 'There's a fire over on Ford Island.' I threw on a shirt and cap and ran topside. The planes were already coming over and I saw the big red sun on their sides. We knew then it was the Japanese."
Then Potier ran to his topside battle station, which as a lookout gave him his ringside seat. The Argonne was tied to a dock no more than the width of Sturgeon bay away from "battleship row" on Ford Island, the main target of the attack. The Japanese planes had to practically skim the water to get the right angle to release their deadly torpedoes in the narrow gap of water, so low that Leonard remembers seeing the grim expressions on the faces of the Japanese pilots. "I could have hit them with a shotgun," he said.
Higher in the sky were the Japanese bombers, dropping their lethal loads. "It was all like a picture, like watching it on television now," he said.
Potier remembers seeing the flagship, the USS Pennsylvania, hit at the end of the dock along with the two destroyers by her. He especially remembers the USS Shaw, a destroyer, blowing apart.
The Shaw was part of the real nightmare, "battleship row" exploding into flames at Ford Island. "It was one mass of oil and fire with heads bobbing up and down through it," he recalls. He remembers the first wave of bombers leaving, with the high altitude bombers returning again, finally leaving about 11 o'clock, some three hours after it all began.
LEONARD POTIER
25 Years Ago
The Argonne was not hit and did not lose any of its crew. Leonard, despite his precarious lookout position, wasn't scratched. He credits a huge floating crane which stood between the Argonne and the attacking planes as saving the ship from damage and even disaster. "I can still hear the strafing bouncing off that crane," he says today.
Because the Argonne was not damaged, she was soon swarming with sailors from doomed vessels. Not until Sunday evening, when an American plane coming in from the wrong direction started anti-aircraft guns booming again, did a wayward shell pierce the ship's hull and kill a sailor who had been rescued during the morning. It caused little damage but did take a life, ironic in view of the fact that an American shell was responsible.
Pearl Harbor was not attacked again but bitter reminders of the Dec. 7 attack lived on. "If the battle had been at sea it wouldn't have been so bad," Potier recalls. "Then most of the debris sinks and what's left you leave behind when you steam away. Not in a harbor, where everything stayed. I was reminded of it every day for four months, until I was transferred back to the states to catch a new ship. They were grisly reminders, like bodies floating up from under the dock every day."
A first class metalsmith at the time of the attack, Potier left the Argonne about four months after Pearl Harbor Day. He carne back to the states to help outfit a brand new submarine tender, the USS Sperry, then sailed with her to a submarine base at Australia. Except for a couple of close calls with Japanese subs, he remembers the rest of his navy career as the direct opposite of the hell of Pearl Harbor: "We hardly knew a war was on."
Potier had joined the navy in 1937 when the latter years of the great depression had little to offer in the way of jobs to a 19 year old. He wanted to join with two schoolmates, Ed Squier and Stanley Anderson, but his dad wouldn't sign right away and they left before him. Finally his dad signed and Leonard was in the navy.
He was with the Argonne the first four years of his navy career and still dreamily confesses, "I really loved that ship." He was just one week away from being discharged when Pearl Harbor was attacked. So it was navy life for another three years.
It was while he was in the navy that Leonard struck up correspondence with a home town WAVE, Ruth Schmelzer, who wrote to Leonard at the suggestion of his sister, Lillian, wife of Tony Schmelzer, Ruth's brother. In January 1945, they were married. Leonard had been discharged but Ruth was still in the navy. After their marriage, she had to go back for six more months.
Then Ruth came home and she and Leonard settled down to raising a family of three boys and three girls. Now, 25 years after Pearl Harbor, they find their efforts in World War II did not help bring peace on earth. Their oldest son, Peter, is in the marines, and their oldest daughter, Mrs. Duane Lardinois, has become an army wife.
There appears to be no evidence that a copyright was registered for the Lidgerwood Monitor in 1942.
Both articles are courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles relating to Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/pearl-harbor-remembrance-day