Psalms at Pearl Harbor

Submitted photo

The Friends of St. Francis president Jim Govro, second from right, recently presented a check for $70,000 to Steven C. Bjelich, president and CEO of Saint Francis Medical Center, second from left. This

check represented profits from the 15th Annual Friends of Saint Francis

Benefit Golf Tournament held at Bent Creek Golf Course. The funds will be

used for the expansion of the Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Also

pictured are Bob Basler Chairman of the Little Reasons Campaign, left, and

Bill Kiel, Executive Director of the Saint Francis Foundation.

A 93-year-old Scott City woman and her daughter recall bombs falling Dec. 7, 1941

By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian

Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Nevan Fisher stopped shaving and looked out the window. Downstairs, his wife, Nettie, readied their five children, including their 6-month-old, for church. Though Hickam Field was just across the street, the drone of planes directly overhead was unusual on a Sunday morning. Seeing the rising sun insignias on the fuselages sent Nevan running for his family.

"Mother," he said, "we're at war." Nevan gathered Nettie and the children around and began reading Psalm 91: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in him will I trust.'" God promised to take care of them, he told his family, but if he did let a bomb hit the house, Nevan said he wanted them all to go to heaven together.

"About that time, wham, a bullet hit our roof," Nettie recalls. The round ricocheted into a nearby yard, harming no one. But as on Sept. 11, 2001, life and the world suddenly seemed different.

Nevan died in 1969. He and Nettie raised 11 children, and he had a 36-year career in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and served nine years as mayor of Scott City. Last summer, the Corps of Engineers dedicated a crane barge in his name.

Nettie lives in Scott City with her son, Mark, and his wife, Leah. A daughter, Faith Ham, also lives in Scott City, and another daughter, Joy Kielhofner, is a Cape Girardeau resident. They celebrated Nettie's 93rd birthday on Friday.

The family gathered at the back door that morning in 1941, watching silver bombs drop from planes over Pearl Harbor a mile away. They had moved to Hawaii from upstate New York only two months earlier. Nevan worked on dredges for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

From their house they couldn't see the devastation occurring on the ships below. At first they thought the black smoke rising into the sky must be an American defensive maneuver. "We thought they were making a smoke screen," says Nettie, who was 31 years old at the time.

Prepared parents

The Fishers' daughter, Mary Ann Shaw, was only 9 years old that day, but her memories remain vivid. The Fishers' second-oldest child, she began crying when the planes started strafing the airfield.

"It was a very frightening experience," she says. "As children we weren't expecting this. I think our parents expected this was a possibility."

The families were moved temporarily from the airfield to housing, presumably safer, 10 miles away, and an immediate blackout was imposed. Shaw remembers the women serving their children that night's meal in the dark.

The blackout continued for months after the attack. An MP rapped on their door one night to complain that the light from their radio could be seen outside the house.

"Repeatedly during the war they would impress on us how far the light at the end of a cigarette could be seen in the dark," said Shaw, now a retired English teacher in Columbia, Mo.

School children were required to carry an identification card and a gas mask every time they left their yards.

No one knew what might happen next. "They didn't tell you much of anything," Fisher said.

Shaw's two best friends in Hawaii were Japanese-American girls. She does not remember any discrimination against them occurring after the attack. The women had a warm reunion a few years ago in Hawaii.

The houses had no basements, so bomb shelters were built behind them. "Whenever an unidentified plane would go over we would have to go to the shelters," Shaw recalls.

But her memories of Hawaii are mostly pleasant. "Children have a way of compartmentalizing things," she says. "... My father had a garden and planted papaya trees and banana trees. It wasn't that every day was filled with terror."

The Fishers had two more children during their four-year stay in Hawaii. Nettie and the children returned to Scott City in 1945 when her husband was assigned to American outposts further out into the South Pacific. She was happy to be home.

Dark memories

Fisher's memories of Hawaii are darker than her daughter's. "I remember enough that I don't want to be in the start of any more wars," she said.

She went back to Oahu eight years ago for a visit. The Army house where they lived was gone, replaced by a park.

Dec. 7 is "just another day" to her, she said. "I'm just glad that's all behind me."

As a high school teacher, Shaw often was asked to speak to social studies classes about Pearl Harbor. Many students told her President Truman was wrong to order the atomic bombs dropped.

"I told them how relieved I was the war was over," she said. "We did not know who was going to win the war."

That was brought home to her a few years ago when she found a scrapbook she kept during the first years of World War II. It showed Allied troop movements in Northern Africa and Europe. "We were so interested because it was so important that we win," she says.

"... That was for us not something we talked philosophically about. It really was a dire world we faced if we didn't win the war."

It would be wrong to compare that situation to the one U.S. is in because of Sept. 11, 2001, Shaw says. The Axis powers were not like the terrorist group al-Qaida, and they were not comparable to Iraq, she said. "Then, we were faced with dealing with a country that had directly attacked us."

Al-Qaida must be dealt with, she says, but it is much more amorphous. She doesn't think transferring our anger to Iraq is wise and wishes President Bush would focus more on helping the Israelis and Palestinians come to an accord.

"We don't have that enemy with a big red rising sun painted on everything we could go after," Shaw said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182