‘They Put Their Lives at Stake’: Remembering Pearl Harbor

Today is the 75th anniversary. Springfield resident John Klement, a retired Navy sailor who turns 99 next month, remembers that what he saw at Pearl Harbor, even months after the attack, still was gut-wrenching.


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John Klement

On 75th Anniversary, Upper Valley Remembers Pearl Harbor Attack World War II veteran, John Klement talks about his service at his home in Springfield, Vt., on Dec. 5, 2016. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » At his home in Springfield, Vt., on Dec. 5, 2016, World War II veteran John Klement holds a photograph of the USS Jarvis, one of the ships he served on. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » On the wall of John Klement's home in Springfield, Vt., hangs of photograph of him taken when a sailor in the U.S. Navy. Klement served in WW II. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » John Klement, a World War II veteran, at his home in Springfield, Vt., on Dec. 5, 2015.(Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » John Klement, a World War II veteran, talks about his service at his home in Springfield, Vt., on Dec. 5, 2015. A photograph of his three children hangs on the wall behind him. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » William Robert Frederick, upper right, a Navy Corpsman during World War II, treated soldiers after the attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago. (Family photograph) P By Maggie Cassidy Valley News Staff Writer Tuesday, December 06, 2016 Print PEARL HARBOR RELATED STORIES Norwich University to Host Pearl Harbor Event Today Springfield, Vt. — John Klement, a retired Navy sailor who turns 99 next month, remembers that what he saw at Pearl Harbor, even months after the attack, still was gut-wrenching. Today, on the 75th anniversary of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a “date which will live in infamy,” the images of the aftermath remain clear in his mind. “It was still a mess. Ships were still battered up,” Klement said, recalling devastation to the USS Oklahoma and USS Arizona in particular. “Even though the water was cleared up, all the debris and everything ... ,” he continued, trailing off. “Just being there made you feel, you know, like, ‘Man, that’s bad.’ ” Klement, who has lived in Springfield for 26 years, arrived at the U.S. naval base in Hawaii aboard the USS Trever a couple months after the attack. After boot camp, he had boarded his ship in San Francisco — he grew up in nearby Daly City, Calif. — and the crew was eventually sent to Pearl Harbor “to get ready to fight the war,” he said. He is among the ever-dwindling group of Americans who remember life at the time of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor — a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan that killed more than 2,403 Americans, devastated the naval base and drew the United States into World War II — and the even smaller number of surviving veterans who served in that era. During today’s anniversary and beyond, Klement hopes that Americans will remember and respect those who have served or are serving. “It’s more or less forgotten by the majority,” Klement said this week, sitting in his apartment. “It’s not only from that war, it’s from all wars, and not only from veterans that saw action, it’s from veterans that were in uniform serving the country. “Don’t look down on (veterans) like they did on the Vietnam people. After all, they put their lives at stake to make it safe for people to live here.” Relatives in the Twin States of two Pearl Harbor survivors who have since died said they, too, will spend today remembering the war, and in particular their loved ones. Allyson Frederick, 61, of Salisbury, Vt., will be flying this morning to her native San Diego to honor her father, William Robert Frederick, a World War II Navy corpsman. Raised on a farm, he was simply a “young kid who never left Pennsylvania” when he first enlisted. She described his duties as a physician’s assistant who practiced field medicine, and during the attack on Pearl Harbor, he suddenly became a person who “watched men die, men he personally could not save,” she said. When she learned some of these stories in adulthood, “all I could think is, here’s this 19-year-old kid with men dying in his lap, all while under fire and trying to save themselves,” she said. Known as “Doc” for the rest of his life, William Frederick also served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, retiring at the rank of master chief after a 30-year career. “This whole experience, the importance of it, influenced him in a way that he was someone who very much lived in the moment and loved and cared for the people around him,” Frederick said. “It was so important to him; he was forever taking care of others.” Janet Berube, 61, of Rochester, N.H., said her grandfather Miles Molesworth, a Nebraska man and also a Navy medic, was on the beach when the Japanese planes attacked. “It was like hell. There were many people hurt, killed, and they worked for days and days just trying to patch everybody up,” Berube said. She said Dec. 7 always is an important date for her and her family. “I always think of it at this time of the year, knowing he was right there and how many lives were lost and how many friends he lost,” Berube said. Klement, after serving on the USS Trever, later was transferred to the USS Jarvis. His five years of service included combat during the invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942. Klement, who became deaf in one ear because of the repeated gunfire from the machinery he manned aboard the ships, recalls the feeling of survival during the war, and how those feelings have morphed in the decades since. “At the time ... if you killed one of your enemy, you should be pretty proud of yourself, because that’s one less that can shoot at you. But when you stop and look back,” he said, making an exasperated gasp, “you say ... ‘I committed murder.’ But it was an altogether different life.” Discussing his memories of the war, Klement is quick to turn conversation away from the challenges and hardships he faced toward discussion of the ships, missions and downtime activities with his fellow sailors. He keeps a manila folder brimming with war paraphernalia, including photographs that he’s collected, declassified documents he sent away for and newspapers that were printed on the ships he served on. They detail everything from war news to Navy basketball league scores. He also has pamphlets and buttons from more than a dozen reunions he attended all over the country in the decades after the war. He hasn’t gone to one in years — in part because the walker he uses makes travel difficult, but also, he said, because “it’s kind of got to the point now where I don’t think too many of them are alive.” More often than not, life on the ship was boring, he said, and sailors grew into a tight-knit family. The service “had some stupid rule that you couldn’t gamble,” he chuckled, so they would smoke and play cards in secrecy from the officers. “We got together ... and fought for each other, and we got through it.” In addition to photographs of his late wife, Helen, known as Fritzie — they met while he was on leave and she waited three years for him to return from the war so they could get married — and their three children, his walls are adorned with pictures of ships and one of him as a young sailor. Sometimes he sits back and looks at them, remembering the experiences. “I enlisted because I said to myself, ‘I sure as hell am not going to walk through this, I’m going to ride,’ ” he said. “I saw more of this world that I ever had the idea I’d see — I saw places I didn’t know exist, I was on places that I didn’t know exist — and even though it was boring at times, it was very exciting and very scary sometimes. I am very glad and proud to be able to say that I went through it. “It’s kind of nostalgic to think back on all of that and say to yourself, ‘Oh boy, I’m sure glad I got the hell out of it.’ ” Klement, who went on to a career in civil service in San Francisco before he and his wife moved to Oregon, upstate New York and then Vermont, acknowledges the “big beef” for him is when people give an attitude of, “Who cares, it’s over with. ... I hope it never happens to me,” he said. “I know what it is to be out there with people shooting at you, and you trying to shoot before they do,” he said. “Just because the war’s over and I’m not in uniform, I’m still a human being and I like to be appreciated as much as possible. Maybe I’m talking stupid, but that’s my feelings.” Today, Klement said, he hopes to make it to a memorial ceremony planned by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. “That’s about the only thing you really can do,” he said, “outside of think about it.”