Posted on 12/04/2021 11:44:32 AM PST by DFG
An Oregon family has turned to crowdfunding to send their 101-year-old Navy veteran dad back to Pearl Harbor — where he heroically helped fend off Japan’s surprise attack 80 years ago.
Kimberlee Heinrichs’s GoFundMe page had raised nearly $9,000 of its $10,000 goal as of early Saturday.
Her father, Ira “Ike” Schab, was a U.S. Navy musician, assigned to the destroyer USS Dobbin, on the quiet Sunday morning of Dec. 7, 1941, according to Hawaii News Now. He had planned to meet his brother, when Japanese planes began to attack.
“It’s hard what to say the feeling that runs through your mind. You’re scared. You don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Schab told the outlet. “When I realized we were under attack I got busy doing what I was told, passing ammunition and getting that sort of stuff done.”
Schab was just 21 years old on that date which lives in infamy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Thanks for posting this. Very nice to have news of something good for a change.
What a long, productive life. I love seeing things like this.
My grandpa would be about his age now.
Vivere mille anni!
Looking great for 101!
Ike must have joined at 17 because the rank of enlisted First Class Petty Officer is hard to get in that short of a period of time absent unusual circumstances.
Anybody that was there that day and pitched in and helped fight the fight is a hero as far as I am concerned whether passing ammo, nursing, pulling out bodies, rescuing other sailors, cooking food, pilots flying the few aircraft and fighting back and so on.
I also think it is important to remember that our guys (mostly kids!, god bless em!), once they got up and got organized fought back (with not much) like the American Tigers they were and as a result MOST of the damage was done the first two hours and little was done, relatively speaking, the second two hours.
28 years later almost to the day I was in Japan and lived there two years. The 4 Japanese nationals I worked with every single day were just outstanding people and would say “dami”....”dami” and shake their head and walk off when you asked about where they were on December 7, 1941.
“Dami” means “no good” in Japanese. I don’t think any of us GI’s ever got any of them to say even one sentence about their “opinion” of Pearl Harbor. The “opinion” we all had was that they thought the whole War was a National Disgrace for Japan.
A funny remembrance, a stranger could come in our shop about any time and find most of the dozen or sailors sitting around reading the Stars and Stripes but the Japanese were always, always, always........WORKING !!!
It doesn’t say what happened to his brother. If he had been one of those killed on Dec. 7, 1941, they probably would have mentioned the fact, and if he was still alive they probably would have mentioned that too, so presumably the brother has passed away.
The rest of the Pearl Harbor keyword, sorted:
Thanks DFG.
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