Remembering ‘day of infamy’

Deepa Bharath

As Keree James looked around the Corona del Mar High School gymnasium

Tuesday afternoon, she felt like she was back in her junior year in

high school.

James, now an English teacher at Corona del Mar High, was thinking

back to a project she undertook for her junior year English class. It

required her to talk to a veteran, but little did she realize then

that it would inspire her to become a teacher.

On Tuesday -- the anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl

Harbor -- she was looking at her honors English class, enjoying lunch

with the veterans they interviewed for an inspirational project

similar to what James did in high school.

“In the beginning, the students were a little hesitant to call up

complete strangers and talk to them,” she said. “But when they did

it, they ended up learning so much and having a great experience --

just like I did.”

The students on Tuesday presented each veteran interviewed a copy

of their class report and a tape of the interview.

Thirty veterans came to the Pearl Harbor Day luncheon, but 40 were

interviewed for the project, said Denise Weiland, community service

and special projects coordinator for the high school.

Veteran Andrew Weniger said talking to the students made him think

about how he felt on that December day 63 years ago, the day he was

working on Hickam Army Airfield at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese

launched their attack.

Like many others who were with him, he faced a barrage of

emotions, said Weniger, now president of the Orange County Chapter of

the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn.

“You look at those big, red meatballs on the side of the

airplanes,” he said, referring to the insignia on the Japanese

fighter planes. “First, you can’t believe it’s happening. Then,

you’re mad that it’s happening. And then, fear sets in.”

Weniger continued in the Army Air Forces -- which would become the

U.S. Air Force after the war -- and went to Europe as a B-17

bombardier.

Corona del Mar high juniors Peter Berg and Jon Kroopf, who

interviewed Weniger for their project, said it felt different to hear

information about Pearl Harbor firsthand rather than getting it from

a history book.

“When you hear about Pearl Harbor, you only hear about the people

who were on the ships,” Kroopf said. “[Weniger] was on the airfield.”

“What happened to him and others on the airfield is probably just

a paragraph in some history book,” Berg said. “But we got to hear and

learn about everything he went through.”

The information they gleaned from Weniger was “priceless” given

the dwindling number of World War II veterans, Kroopf said.

“He drew parallels for us with 9/11, which made it clearer to us,”

he said. “It just goes to show that it happened many years ago, and

it still happens.”

That is exactly what veterans, especially Pearl Harbor survivors,

try to get across to the younger generations, said Anthony Iantorno,

who was a sergeant in charge of a gun crew in Pearl Harbor at the

time of the attack.

Iantorno was one of those who carried the killed in action and

laid them on the grass outside the hospital, so they could be

identified.

“It didn’t hit me until later that night, when everything quieted

down,” he said.

Iantorno gets a kick out of telling the kids about his experience

and watching them react to his story.

“I go to 15 schools a year to talk about this,” he said. “But the

important thing is to tell them what happened, things that’ll never

make it to their history books.”

* DEEPA BHARATH is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or by e-mail at

[email protected].