Dream of Pearl Harbor /  by Beth Nakamura

Ask Wallace Doble about Pearl Harbor, when he was a newly enlisted 17-year-old onboard the USS Tangier, a seaplane tender stationed in Hawaii. Or when, later in the war, an accident involving an ammunitions explosion left him mostly deaf.

He'll get to that.

But not yet.

First, he'll want to tell you about the dream.

In it, Doble is holding onto a rail, looking out onto a body of water. 

"I don't know if I was on a ship or a dock," Doble recalled. "There was an explosion in the distance, and then a plane came by," he remembers. The plane had a red circle painted on it near the tail. It was so close, Doble says, he was able to look the pilot in the eye.

"I waved at him and he didn't wave back," Doble says, "so I got to cussing him." Right after that, "I woke up."

He was 11 years old.

Fast forward six years, when Doble quit school, enlisted in the Navy, and found himself on the Tangier, a boatswain's mate, 2nd class. It was Dec. 7, 1941.

"I was standing on the deck, holding onto the rails, looking out onto the water, and that's when it happened," Doble says, his voice getting more excited with each twist and turn of the story. "It happened just like my damned dream."

A big tank, "across the bay, a few miles away," exploded before his eyes. Then a plane flew past, a Japanese flag emblazoned on its side. "I waved to the pilot and he didn't wave back, just like the dream," Doble says. "And I started cussing him out."

The rest happened fast.

"Someone opened fire," said Doble, who didn't realize quite what was happening until he noticed a shipmate, who was walking up the deck behind him, had been shot at the collar. "I didn't think it was real until I saw he got shot," he said.

Petrified, Doble thought about jumping off the side of the ship, or "going down the hatch," he said. He chose the hatch, where he hid out for the next couple of hours. The Tangier, he believes, was the first to fire back that day. Several members of the crew went on to rescue over 30 men from the nearby USS Utah, which had been hit by two torpedoes, and capsized.

Doble, who is 90, lives with his wife, June, in Eagle Creek. He spent five years in the Navy, going on to a brief stint as a merchant marine before becoming a logger. He attended USS Tangier reunions years ago but hasn't met with fellow Pearl Harbor veterans in a long time. Last he knew, there were about five shipmates left. The Tangier, which was decommissioned in 1947, had a second life with a shipping company.  It was sold for scrap in 1961..

When the weather's good, Doble likes to spend all day outside riding his push mower, or tinkering in the workshop he built several years ago. There's a pond out back, which he spent two years digging out. In it, there's a big koi collection; he feeds them when the weather's warm. Every day, a couple times a day, he puts out corn and nuts for the squirrels.

Behind the pond, over past the bridge he built, sits an old trailer he bought some years back. He no longer uses it for storage since a storm came, bringing down some trees and a piece of the trailer with it. But there's a painting he made that runs along the length of it, something he did with his son, Dan, who died this past spring. He was 60.

The painting was a big project, and took them several days to finish. It's bright blue, about the color of Doble's eyes, and glistens on a sunny day, when the shadows of backyard trees sway and shimmer on its surface.

"I don't know why I chose to paint the Tangier," Doble says. "I just did."

A few thoughts on covering WWII veterans, and the use of the term, 'Japs'. /  by Beth Nakamura

 

 

There’s something that occurs to me when I’m covering WWII veterans, but it usually doesn’t enter my mind until it’s almost too late. Call it the unintended consequences of making the (for me) complicated decision of changing my last name when I got married -- a name that turned, from that day forward, unmistakably Japanese. That I would from time to time wrestle with this change never entered my mind.

I’ve done stories on WWII veterans my entire professional life and, while it’s difficult – and dangerous – to characterize a group of people, whatever the group, I’ll go out on a limb and say WWII vets are, by and large, a lovely bunch: gracious, good humored and, in keeping with the “greatest generation” moniker, overwhelmingly humble.  Covering them as long as I have, I’ve developed a kind of attachment over the years. Watching as their numbers dwindle makes me sad – a natural consequence of affection, attachment, and the inevitable loss that comes with it.

Sitting with these men and hearing their stories – and what stories they contain! –invariably leads to tales of coming up against the enemy. When it happens, I’m always caught off guard: no wait-for-it bracing, no anticipatory resistance. Just the one word, which, once it starts, generally starts flying.

Japs.

Let the internal machinations begin!

Did I say my last name when I introduced myself, I silently wonder? Maybe, given my appearance, they thought I said McNamara, not Nakamura. (This is a common mistake people make when meeting me, and understandable. I’m half Irish, with not a drop of Japanese in my blood.) What if they ask for my card? They’ll see my name. And then they’ll know. Avoid. Business. Cards.

Breathe.

I try to keep my journalistic relationships pretty clean; Introducing complicating and entirely unnecessary elements is something I’m loathe to do. The idea is to keep the stories flowing, not stop them up with speed bumps like, well, like my last name.

A few years ago, when I was just learning to tell stories using different tools, I made my first video.

In it, one man, WWII veteran Craig Marlette, spoke eloquently about his role in the fighting, and of how many people may have died as a direct result of his actions.  It’s a poignant, confessional moment and it happens quickly, :50 seconds into the video:

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/09/now_there_are_seven_shipmates.html

When I met Craig that morning, the first thing I did was introduce myself – first and last names – and give him my business card. I’ve often wondered, thinking back to that day, whether or not hearing my name had anything at all to do with the emotions that poured out of him that morning. I wince at the thought.

Meeting Craig and the other men of the USS Dunlap meant the world to me. I loved them – admittedly a Don Juan kind of love, simultaneously genuine and fleeting – and I loved every minute of telling their stories.

Same for some years prior, when I stood on Omaha Beach and watched in awe as men, whose stories of D-Day I knew intimately, stood in tears on the same shore they washed up on, seasick and terrified, fifty years prior. They hadn’t set foot on that beach since the day of the historic maneuver and likely never would again. Not one second of the experience was lost on me. I’ll never forget it.

I have also listened as my husband – a Japanese national who came to the United States to go to graduate school – shared stories of excruciating pain: being taunted by young men in rural Missouri uttering fake Chinese in his direction. Being told by a veteran, “I bombed your country. I’ll never let you take my picture.” (My husband, Motoya, is a photographer.)

I’m not sure if Wallace Doble, whose Pearl Harbor story I wrote this week, ever got wind of my last name. I introduced myself first name only that day, and set my business card on the table just as I was leaving.

I savored every moment I spent with him that day. 

Was I hiding? You could say that.

I prefer to think of it as getting out of the way of the story. 

Introduction to a talk I gave at the Society of Professional Journalists' Building a Better Journalist conference. /  by Beth Nakamura

This photograph floated into my mind as I thought about what I could possibly say to you, a group of wannabe young journalists, sitting in a room, earnest, open, expectant. I tend to think in pictures, which float in and out of my head. And when I’m lucky enough or open enough or in the shower or whatever it is that predisposes the mind to latch onto and capture our most important and often elusive currency, which is to say our ideas, I try and stay alert to that. So this picture came into my head.  I shot it years ago, when I was just beginning my career, when I was you. And I thought that World War I veteran, sitting there, that’s me: ancient, a little broken, just sort of holding it together -- at first glance, at least.  And that’s you, over there, that great-grandchild, face up against the window, clamoring to get in.

My mother got cancer when I was 29. I was working at the Virginian-Pilot then, and took a leave of absence to take care of her. A few weeks turned into a few months and that eventually became six precious months together until she died, finally, from cancer, and exhaustion and more morphine than oughta be legal. When it was clear early on she was terminally ill and needed me with her, the Virginian-Pilot encouraged me to go and do what I had to do and don’t even think about them and Godspeed.  And they stayed true to that. They also kept me on the payroll the entire time. The entire time. That, my friends, was the gilded age of journalism.

I bring up my mother because when I think of the waves of grief I have endured in recent years, having experienced this slow motion collapse of the world of big and of institutions and of journalism as we understood it, and just, gosh, the entire revolution that is happening, and the redefinition of the craft and how we practice it; When I think of all the amazing minds that have left the industry -- whether through layoffs or just because they couldn’t stomach it and they’ve got kids to take care of and all the real and legitimate reasons, and even some of the phantom reasons, and just the cumulative effect of all of it, of these tremendous, tsunami-size waves of grief; Well, it’s not like losing your mother. But it’s close. 

If you don’t have the mettle for the atmosphere I am describing here you should walk away now and don’t look back -- while you still have plenty of chance. But if, like me, you can’t imagine a life without all the interestingness, the access and the steady stream of fascinating people and stories and of the beauty that is our everyday ordinary, our privileged experience, then by all means, welcome. Who am I to get in your way. Throw everything you have at it. Be nimble. Be open. And play those two words on repeat. Nimble, open, nimble, open.

Which brings me back to this picture. Because the best work in whatever form contains nuance and metaphor and often a little irony or paradox, and because wherever there is shadow there will always be light, I thought well, sure, that’s me, that old guy. That much is obvious. But I’m also that little kid, alive with the possibility and power of journalism, hands pressed against this window of opportunity I have with the work, and with you here now.

In ancient myth, as in life, wherever there is death, there is often rebirth. And I think that’s where we are now. I’m often pretty much baseline emotionally exhausted these days. But also – and please hold onto this if nothing else – I’m exhilarated.

 

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