By Jeff Werner, Bucks Local News
“Yesterday, Dec. 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered those now immortal words, Warminster resident George Frazier was recooperating in Hawaii after being shot by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Frazier, who was stationed in Hawaii with the United States Army, was scheduled to leave the island on Dec. 13.
Frazier grew up in Cambridge, Mass., during the Great Depression. He left school after the eighth grade to join Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief program for the unemployed, to earn money for his family.
Just before turning 18 in 1941, he left the CCC and joined the United States Army. “I just wanted to go into the service. I had it in my head for a long time, ever since I was 14 or 15,” he said.
He requested duty in the Philippines and Panama, but was told in both cases the quotas were filled. Then Frazier asked, “‘What about Hawaii?’ They told me, ‘You’ll get it.’”
He arrived in Hawaii in March 1941 and was assigned to Schofield Barracks, which is located near Wheeler Field and about 15 miles from Pearl Harbor.
Days before the attack, Frazier was notified that he was to be shipped back to New Jersey on Dec. 13 to attend communications school. “So on Dec. 6, my friends took me downtown and gave me an aloha party,” he said.
Sunday morning, Dec. 7 dawned like any other on the island. The men got up and went to breakfast. On their way back, as they crossed the quadrangle, they heard a lot of racket.
“All this noise was going on and we couldn’t figure out what it was. The Navy was back in from maneuvers. We were off of maneuvers,” he said.
“We’re standing there out on the quadrangle and we see this plane circling and coming lower and lower. You could see the red spots. Someone said, ‘They’re Japanese.’ Somebody else said, ‘What are they doing over here? They’re supposed to be in China.’
“By that time they started strafing and we scattered,” he said. “It went on for about a minute or two. We went into the supply room to get rifles and anything we could to fight back. We were fighting them with everything we had – we had automatics, .45s and a couple of .22s. If I had a slingshot I would have fired it,” he said.
Frazier was directed by his captain to secure a weapons carrier from the motor pool and to load it up with ammunition.
He ran upstairs, put on his field uniform and headed to the motor pool with a .45 in his hand. “I get to the motor pool and they’re looking for a trip ticket. I told them I don’t need a trip ticket. I just grabbed the weapons carrier and came back.”
Back at the barracks, he joined a column of vehicles bound for pre-assigned field positions. A medic joined him in the front seat of the weapons carrier.
“Off we went,” he said. As the column crossed a bridge, he saw Japanese planes crisscross in front of him and knew he was in trouble.
“The next thing I knew the medic, he went forward, blood spurting out of his neck. He was killed,” said Frazier. “I hit the dash board and split my leg open. I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital.”
He was told later that he had been wounded by gun fire and that the vehicle had struck the rail of the bridge, jamming the steering wheel into his stomach.
“We had no idea it was going to happen there,” said Frazier. “We knew we would be going off to war somewhere, but we never figured the war would come there. You just shook your head and said, how can a fleet just disappear?”
After a four to five-day hospital stay, he returned to the Schofield Barracks. He spoke to the chaplain and his captain, pleading with them to intervene and keep him on the island. “No one could help,” he said.
On Dec. 29, he was shipped back to California and was discharged out of the army due to his wounds. He hitchhiked back to Boston. But he was eager to get back to the war.
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*This is the first half of a two-part series on George Frazier. It continues next week.
*This is the first half of a two-part series on George Frazier. It continues next week.
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