Day of Infamy : Alex Man Survived Pearl Harbor

Source: Alexandria Times-Tribune, December 11, 1991.

Day of Infamy: Alex Man Survived Pearl Harbor by Stephen Dick

It was the Day of Infamy. 50 years ago. Sleepy Pearl Harbor Navla [sic] Base in Hawaii, where reveille had been about an hour old. Sailors were waking up, taking showers, ands [sic] finding their way to the mess decks for a steaming cup of coffee.

The ships were lined up in port. On Battleship Row were some of the Navy's mightiest warships, named after the states. The USS Arizona has become the most famous but sitting two ships away, outboard from another battleship, was the USS Oklahoma. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, a first class cook named John M. High, already a five-year veteran of the Navy, was preparing chow for his shipmates. Just another Sunday morning, the ship probably in holiday routine.

While the men ate their breakfasts, the waters 200 miles north of Oahu were infested with Japanese ships including six carriers loaded with warplanes. Around 8 a.m. the squadron of Japanese bombers snaked around the mountain ridges that bordered Oahu. Past the mountains and over the sea the bombers turned north toward Pearl Harbor and dropped their lethal cargo on the unsuspecting men below. For a half hour 183 planes decimated much of the US's second fleet. Twenty ships were damaged, many sunk, including the USS Oklahoma where John High, like his shipmates, may have thought the apocalypse was upon them.

High went topside, saw the carnage, and knew his ship was going down. The ship had suffered repeated torpedo assaults. He had no recourse but to jump into the water which was covered with burning oil. High suffered some mild burns and was forced to swim under water to shore.

Soon his ship lay on the bottom of Pearl Harbor along with the Arizona and others. Also at the bottom were his naval records. He was listed as missing in action for six weeks after the attack. When High, who was from West Virginia, ran into a man he knew from home, the man was incredulous. "We thought you were dead." he told High.

John M. High is alive to this day, and makes his home in Alexandria. He moved here in the late Forties with his wife, Clara Ellen Wright, who was from Alexandria. Because he survived Pearl Harbor, where 2,000 soldiers and sailors died, High was honored last Saturday, the 50th anniversary of the attack, by the Alexandria Veterans of Foreign Wars where he was made an honorary member.

High is not the youth he was when he heard and felt the Japanese bombs falling that morning. At 72, he suffered a stroke two years ago and does very little nowadays. But Clara said he enjoyed the ceremony on Saturday. "John got emotional about it," she said.

When he was 22, however, he was more worried about getting his pay than he was about the historical significance of the bombing. When he tried to get paid, long after the attack, he was told he'd have to wait because of his missing records. High told the Navy he'd be going home. He got paid, and spent the war years in the Pacific on a number of ships. Clara could not recall their names but said he was often in combat situations.

In 1945, with the war over, John was transferred to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. There he met Clara, a WAVE, who had joined the Navy from Alexandria. They married in 1945. He was the chief commissaryman at Great Lakes until his discharge in 1947.

The couple came back to Alexandria to make their home. John worked at a number of jobs including Stellite in Alexandria. He was transferred by that company to Kokomo and retired from there in 1984.

The couple had two sons, Charles, who served with the Army as an MP, in El Paso, Texas, and Phillip, who also joined the Army and spent time in Korea.

During the years where the war retreated into memory, John and Clara frequently went to reunions of survivors of the USS Oklahoma. There the stories and memories flowed. A compartment full of men had sunk with the ship, but in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor they had made enough noise to be heard. When they were rescued by divers, they had spent time in pitch black darkness with water up to their necks. Then there was a priest aboard from Dubuque, Iowa, who rescued many men by forcing them out of a small porthole into the water. The priest had perished, however, as he was too large to fit through the opening.

Clara said that attending the survivors' reunions was like getting together with family. One reunion took place in Hawaii and a survivor from Mississippi was told by his doctor that his health wouldn't allow such a long trip. He told the doctor he'd rather be dead in Pearl Harbor than alive in Gulfport. He went and he returned.

The last reunion the Highs attended was in, aptly enough, Oklahoma City in 1990. Because of John's illness they did not attend the 1991 reunion, and will likely miss the 1992 get-together in Norfolk, Va.

But the memories and heroic actions of men under extreme conditions remain as an inspiration to us all. As VFW Commander Bill Tankersley said at Saturday's ceremony, "America answered the call and the rest is history."

The USS Arizona remains at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, a memorial to that day of infamy, and a reminder that we live in a volatile, unpredictable world. And what of the USS Oklahoma? She was raised and was going to be repaired. But as tugboats were pulling her out to sea, the lines broke and the ship sank again. The Navy let her rest. It was her men, not herself, that answered the call 50 years ago. John High was one of those men.

Nathan C. Beals, Probate Judge

While searching at Google Book Search, I found an interesting tidbit about my maternal 5th great grandfather, Nathan C. Beals (1789-1867). Nathan was mentioned in the book, Courts and Lawyers of Indiana by Leander John Monks, Logan Esarey, and Ernest Vivian Shockley. The book was published by Federal Pub. Co., in 1916 and was digitized from the Harvard University.

The mention on page 751 states, "Nathan C. Beals was the first Probate Judge (1844-46) of Howard county. He was a plain, good natured, unsophisticated farmer, and a man of average intellect. Benjamin Lesoura, who succeeded Beals, was an honest, upright and industrious citizen, and a farmer by occupation. Nathan C. Beals was elected to succeeded Judge Lesoura, and he, in turn, was followed by Robert Ervin, who served until the office was abolished."

At the time that he served, the county was known as Richardville county. Howard county was organized out of the Miami Reservation as Richardville county by act of the Indiana State Legislature on January 15, 1844. On December 28, 1846 the name of the county was changed to Howard by another act of the State Legislature.

Nathan appears in the 1850 census of Howard county in Taylor township with his occupation listed as a millwright, age 61, birthplace unknown. The 1860 census of Howard county shows his age as 70, born in Tennessee. Nathan was born 1789-9mo-3rd within the confines of Lost Creek Monthly Meeting, Jefferson County, Tennessee. He died 1867-9mo-5d in Humboldt, Richardson Co., Nebraska.

Ambitious Project

Yesterday I began the rather ambitious project of transcribing the newspapers of Alexandria found in the Alexandria-Monroe Public Library. The history room has the Alexandria Times-Tribune starting with March 1, 1905. The Times began in 1885 and merged with the Tribune (began in 1898) in 1903 to become the Times-Tribune. Most of my maternal ancestry was in the Alexandria area at that time, and my hope is that by embarking on this project I will discover new data about my family.

Alexandria was a booming place in those early days due to the discovery of natural gas. The town was settled in 1836. By 1890, the population was only 715 but by 1900 the population had grown to 7,221, of which 1005 were foreign born, according to the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica. Population growth of over 700 percent was a direct result of the numerous factories that at one time existed in the area.

I will be posting the articles that I transcribe to the INMADISO-L mailing list at Rootsweb. This is a mailing list dedicated to those seeking information about their families from Madison County, Indiana. The activity on the list has been rather slow lately, but hopefully my postings will not only help another researcher but also stimulate discussion traffic on the list.

At another county mailing list I subscribe to a similar project there by an individual has greatly increased the knowledge of the county and its people and has helped my research. My goal is to be able to give someone else a clue or a nugget as I do my own digging.

My goal is to try to work on this at least one lunch hour per week and see how that goes.