Due to injuries he sustained in the attack on Pearl Harbor, George Frazier of Warminster was discharged from the U.S. Army in Dec. 1941.
Back at home in Massachusettes, he took a job at the Boston Navy Yard. While working there he saw signs advertising for help in Hawaii. Longing to get back into the service and figuring he might have a chance if he returned to Hawaii, he put his name in and was sent back to Pearl Harbor as a civilian worker.
It was not until he returned to Pearl that he realized just how devastating the attack had been.
“When everything happened in December it was all confused,” he said. “Getting hit, going in and out of the hospital, trying to stay there. It was mixed up,” he said.
“When I got back to the yard, it was devastation. You had no idea until you really saw it,” he said. “They were still raising ships and we were working on them to get them back on duty,” said Frazier. “The Arizona was still down there. The stack was still up before they cut that all down,” he said.
“We could never figure out why they never hit the oil tanks – there were big tanks all over the place — or the ammunition places,” he said. “The first thing they did was knock out all the fighters, like Wheeler Field. That’s where we heard all the bombing and everything.
“It was just devastation,” he said. “The P-40s that had been lined up in a row at Wheeler were just knocked out completely. They had lined up the airplanes to make them easier to guard, never figuring the Japanese would plow through them right down the line – bang, bang, bang.
“They hit all the fields so no one could get up and shoot them. From then on it gave them leeway to come in. The torpedo bombs were the second wave and they hit everything then,” he said.
Frazier said everyone took the attack personally.
“It was like someone slapping your face. And not just us,” he said. “Back at home, everyone man, woman and child got involved in the war effort. It was the only time in the history of this country that happened.”
Not long after returning to Pearl, he ran into some of his old Army buddies in Honolulu and again longed to be back in the service. He rode with them up into the mountains, where he slept overnight in the dugouts. “I spoke with the captain and he said he’d love to have me back, but I couldn’t get out of the Navy Yard.”
After some persistence, the powers that be finally allowed him to enlist with the U.S. Navy SeeBees, a militarized Naval Construction Force which built advance bases in the war zone.
As a SeeBee, he was shipped to Midway Island, then to Saipan and Iwo Jima where he saw significant action. He received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his service both at Pearl and at Saipan.
After more than a year of service with the SeeBees, he returned to Hawaii where he re-enlisted in the Army. He ended up with his old outfit in Japan.
“In a roundabout way, a lot of things in between, I ended up with them,” he said.
While in Japan, he witnessed the devastating aftermath of the atomic blast at Nagasaki.
“Everyone had tears. We had just came from jungle fighting and here we are crying,” he said.
“The whole town, 100,000 men, women and babies, all gone. A couple big buildings standing there. The rest was flat. Whoever come up with a device like that, people should shoot them. People have no concept. Oh, God.”
Unlike many, who argue dropping the bomb prevented countless American deaths and brought an early end to the war, he sees it differently.
“When you pick on babies, that’s going too far. To me, that’s a no-no,” he said.
Following the war Frazier lived briefly in Boston and Norfolk, Va., before settling in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. In the 1960s, he moved to Hatboro. He worked for a moving company for about 50 years until his retirement.
For years after the war, he never talked about his time at Pearl or in the service
“Nobody had any idea,” he said. That changed one day when his granddaughter ran into a group of Pearl Harbor survivors at an event in Philadelphia. Soon after, he joined the Pearl Harbor Survivors.
He is often invited to speak to school groups about his experiences and was recently among 20 veterans to participate in a program at Council Rock High School South.
*This is the second article in a two-part series. For part one, CLICK HERE.
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