Thursday 7 December 2017

He saved 6 men at Pearl Harbor. Finally, 76 years later, he's being honored

These men experienced the horror of the sinking of the battleship USS Arizona and lived to tell about it. “Witnesses to infamy: The survivors of the attack on the battleship USS Arizona,” an azcentral special documentary Pat Shannahan
PHOENIX — Anyone who heard the story of Joe George at Pearl Harbor knew at once this was the story of a hero: a young sailor who risked his life in the fiery Japanese ambush to rescue the last six survivors from the sinking USS Arizona.
Joe George should get a medal for what he did, everyone would say.
Strangers who heard the story said it. The men he saved said it. 
But for more than seven decades, no one could make it happen. 
The Navy commended George for his actions and noted them in his record. For a medal, the Navy wanted an eyewitness account of the incident, corroboration from a senior officer who was aboard the USS Vestal with George on Dec. 7, 1941. Neither could be found.


Joe George, early in his Navy years. George will posthumouslyJoe George, early in his Navy years. George will posthumously receive the Bronze Star Medal for Valor on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, aboard the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. 
And there was a hitch in the story: George, a boatswain's mate second class, disobeyed an order to cut the line between the Vestal, a maintenance ship, and the Arizona. He had spotted the six desperate men on the burning battleship and threw a line to them, ignoring the order to cast off.
The failure to follow orders seemed to stand in the way of George's medal.
George died in 1996. A few years later, the son of one of the men George rescued took up the cause of the medal.
He called. He wrote letters. He enlisted other Pearl Harbor survivors. He tracked down George's family and promised George's widow he would fight to secure recognition for the man who had saved his dad's life.
George's daughter, Joe Ann Taylor, joined the campaign. They took it all the way to the White House.

USS Arizona survivor Donald Stratton waits for the
USS Arizona survivor Donald Stratton waits for the start of the 75th annual remembrance of the attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 2016.  
And they did it. On Thursday, a Navy admiral will present Taylor a Bronze Star Medal for Valor, recognizing George posthumously. The ceremony will take place aboard the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, yards from where the story began.
And though George has died, the story continues. His efforts saved six men that day. Now, improbably — 76 years later — of the five USS Arizona survivors still alive, two of them are men George saved. 
When Taylor accepts her father's medal, she won't be alone. Donald Stratton, 95, and Lauren Bruner, 97, will be standing there with her. 
"Whatever medal it is doesn’t matter," she said. "It was a story that needed to be told. It was a huge part of history, for those men who were true heroes, and it was was my dad who helped them."

How USS Arizona sailors were rescued

In 1966, Donald Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor for the first time since the attack. He hadn't talked about it much until then, but after that visit, he revealed more of what happened, of his rescue from the Arizona.
Stratton and five other crewmen were trapped on a burning tower as the battleship buckled beneath the Japanese assault. They were burned badly and thought they would die. Until they saw the sailor on the Vestal.
Randy Stratton would listen to his dad describe the heat, the flames, the pain, the terror of climbing hand-over-hand from the Arizona to the Vestal, the elation of rescue. He wondered about the Vestal sailor and searched until he learned the identity. When he discovered the sailor was never given a medal, he undertook the cause.
He contacted then-representative Joel Hefley, who represented Stratton's home state of Colorado.
"The first time I took it to Joel Hefley, he said, 'This is going to be one of the easiest ones we’ve ever done,' " Randy Stratton said. "The Navy kicked it back."
He approached other lawmakers in other states, went to the Navy repeatedly, was told over and over that the medal would be an easy sell. But it wasn't.
The missing paperwork, the lack of corroborating accounts, the years that had passed, all worked against the sailor's son. And that issue of an order disobeyed seemed insurmountable.
"I was keeping it alive, keeping it out front," Randy Stratton said. By then he had reached out to George's widow. "I promised Thelma George way back when, I told her I was going to get her husband a medal. I called her every December 7 from the 60th anniversary on. I told her Lauren and my dad are still here because of her husband."

'I'm that unknown sailor'

Taylor knew little about her dad's experiences in World War II and didn't hear the story of the Vestal for years.  George told his daughter's husband, Gary, more than he told her.
“He would start to cry when he talked about it," she said. "We knew he was on the Vestal … but never did I have the opportunity to listen to what he did.”
USS Arizona survivors at Pearl Harbor 2016
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