Pearl Harbor vet still standing tall . . .
In the news today:
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20121207/NEWS/312070039/Still-standing-tall
Pearl Harbor vet still standing tall<O
</O
WWII POW 'hoped we would get back home someday'
<O</O12:09 AM, Dec 7, 2012<O</O
Written by Cliff Radel<O</O
At dawn, they manned their guns. It was Dec. 7, 1941, but not at Pearl Harbor. This was Corregidor in the Philippines. On this day 71 years ago, no one on the island protecting the mouth of Manila Bay was surprised to see the sky filled with Japanese warplanes.
<O</O“We knew they were coming,” recalled Everett Reamer, then a 16-year-old corporal who lied about his age to enlist in the army, now an 87-year-old General Motors retiree dividing his time between North Bend and Lake Havasu City, Ariz.
<O</O“We had been sleeping outside by our anti-aircraft guns since the end of November,” Reamer said. “That day, the Japanese planes flew over us to bomb a nearby American naval base. We shot at them - but didn’t hit anything.”
<O</OThe Japanese did. “They bombed the hell out of Cavite Naval Base,” he noted. “We knew we were getting into World War II. We just hoped we would get back home someday.”
<O</OBefore eventually flying home in a plane loaded with wounded GIs in 1945, he would take two life-defining and death-defying stands. One, after Corregidor fell to Japan in 1942, found him as a prisoner of war standing at attention at gunpoint for 132 consecutive hours.
<O</OThat time on his feet landed him in the Guinness Book of Records until his category, “standing motionless,” was eliminated after 1991. The book failed to mention what Reamer endured to set the record: Repeated beatings, no food or water; the heat of an August sun; six armed guards with orders to kill him if he faltered while standing at attention at the main gate of a prisoner of war camp in Osaka, Japan.
<O</O“I don’t remember the heat bothering me,” Reamer said. He doesn’t remember any bathroom breaks. They didn’t exist.
“You just relieve yourself in your pants,” he said. “But when you’re not eating or drinking,” and perspiring profusely, “you don’t have a lot of waste.”
<O</ODuring his stint in the sun, he had a lot to time to think.
<O</OHe remembered dropping out of Taylor High School and signing up for the Army on Feb. 2, 1941, just after his 16th birthday. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather who fought in the Spanish-American War. So when the Army offered him the choice of going to Panama or the Philippines, he chose the latter.
“I thought about that decision several times,” he admitted, during his 132 hours standing at attention “before I became a zombie and passed out.”
<O</OWhat did he do to earn such a punishment? He took a stand.
<O</OReamer and the 71 other GIs in his POW barracks saw their Japanese captors stealing care packages sent by the International Red Cross to the inmates. The guards feasted on the packages of Spam, candy bars and crackers while the prisoners starved.
<O</OThat enraged Reamer. He formed an eight-man team to liberate the packages from a storeroom. The plot failed. Reamer and another prisoner were ratted out by an American officer. Their sentence: Stand at attention.
<O</OAfter Reamer collapsed, he was sentenced to a year in solitary confinement. Guards beat him regularly on the back with three-foot-long wooden clubs. They forced him to stand all day in his five-by-seven cell. He could not exercise. He could lay down at night. He had no blanket. No shoes. No change of clothes. No toilet, just a bucket emptied once a day. No heat in the winter. Little food or water. His diet consisted of a cereal bowl of water and half a Dixie cup’s worth of rice, twice a day. No wonder his weight plummeted from 160 to 92 pounds.
<OThe guards let him take a bath every three months. He suffered from dysentery, massive skin infections, night blindness, frostbite and flea bites.
“I was covered with fleas,” Reamer said. “At night, the prison was so quiet, you could hear them hopping.”
<OHe described the sound: “Hearing hundreds of pins dropping.”
<O</OThrough all this, he did not regret taking a stand. He showed the same resolve later in life. In 1962, he was working at a steel plant near Detroit. His boss was fired. Reamer called the chairman of the board to protest. Later that day, Reamer was out of a job and headed back to Cincinnati, where he found work at Norwood’s now-leveled General Motors plant.
<O</O“I just won’t stand for injustice,” he explained. “From time to time, you have to stand your ground.”
<O</OHe shifted in his chair and groaned. Then, he apologized.
<O</O“My heart rate and blood pressure are real low today,” he said. “I just got back from dialysis. I go three days a week. My kidneys are on the fritz, have been ever since I came back from the war.”
<OThat comes from daily beatings and standing at attention for 132 hours.
<O</ONot wanting to throw himself a pity party, Reamer started talking about how he felt when he came home to America in 1945. For the first time in two hours of reminiscing, his strong voice weakened.
“When I left the country to go to the Philippines, my ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said softly. “When I came home, my plane flew over it.”
<O</OHe paused. He struggled to keep his emotions from overtaking his voice.
<O“I still remember what I saw when I looked out the left window of that military transport plane loaded with wounded men,” he said.
<O</OHe paused again.
<O“It was,” he began, “the ... most .. . beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life.”
<O</OFrom his window seat, he looked down on a hill above the California coastline. Atop the hill, white stones spelled two words:
<O</OWelcome Home<O</O
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20121207/NEWS/312070039/Still-standing-tall
Pearl Harbor vet still standing tall<O
</OWWII POW 'hoped we would get back home someday'
<O
</O12:09 AM, Dec 7, 2012<O</OWritten by Cliff Radel<O
</OAt dawn, they manned their guns. It was Dec. 7, 1941, but not at Pearl Harbor. This was Corregidor in the Philippines. On this day 71 years ago, no one on the island protecting the mouth of Manila Bay was surprised to see the sky filled with Japanese warplanes.
<O
</O“We knew they were coming,” recalled Everett Reamer, then a 16-year-old corporal who lied about his age to enlist in the army, now an 87-year-old General Motors retiree dividing his time between North Bend and Lake Havasu City, Ariz.<O
</O“We had been sleeping outside by our anti-aircraft guns since the end of November,” Reamer said. “That day, the Japanese planes flew over us to bomb a nearby American naval base. We shot at them - but didn’t hit anything.”<O
</OThe Japanese did. “They bombed the hell out of Cavite Naval Base,” he noted. “We knew we were getting into World War II. We just hoped we would get back home someday.”<O
</OBefore eventually flying home in a plane loaded with wounded GIs in 1945, he would take two life-defining and death-defying stands. One, after Corregidor fell to Japan in 1942, found him as a prisoner of war standing at attention at gunpoint for 132 consecutive hours.<O
</OThat time on his feet landed him in the Guinness Book of Records until his category, “standing motionless,” was eliminated after 1991. The book failed to mention what Reamer endured to set the record: Repeated beatings, no food or water; the heat of an August sun; six armed guards with orders to kill him if he faltered while standing at attention at the main gate of a prisoner of war camp in Osaka, Japan.<O
</O“I don’t remember the heat bothering me,” Reamer said. He doesn’t remember any bathroom breaks. They didn’t exist.“You just relieve yourself in your pants,” he said. “But when you’re not eating or drinking,” and perspiring profusely, “you don’t have a lot of waste.”
<O
</ODuring his stint in the sun, he had a lot to time to think.<O
</OHe remembered dropping out of Taylor High School and signing up for the Army on Feb. 2, 1941, just after his 16th birthday. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather who fought in the Spanish-American War. So when the Army offered him the choice of going to Panama or the Philippines, he chose the latter.“I thought about that decision several times,” he admitted, during his 132 hours standing at attention “before I became a zombie and passed out.”
<O
</OWhat did he do to earn such a punishment? He took a stand.<O
</OReamer and the 71 other GIs in his POW barracks saw their Japanese captors stealing care packages sent by the International Red Cross to the inmates. The guards feasted on the packages of Spam, candy bars and crackers while the prisoners starved.<O
</OThat enraged Reamer. He formed an eight-man team to liberate the packages from a storeroom. The plot failed. Reamer and another prisoner were ratted out by an American officer. Their sentence: Stand at attention.<O
</OAfter Reamer collapsed, he was sentenced to a year in solitary confinement. Guards beat him regularly on the back with three-foot-long wooden clubs. They forced him to stand all day in his five-by-seven cell. He could not exercise. He could lay down at night. He had no blanket. No shoes. No change of clothes. No toilet, just a bucket emptied once a day. No heat in the winter. Little food or water. His diet consisted of a cereal bowl of water and half a Dixie cup’s worth of rice, twice a day. No wonder his weight plummeted from 160 to 92 pounds.<O
The guards let him take a bath every three months. He suffered from dysentery, massive skin infections, night blindness, frostbite and flea bites.“I was covered with fleas,” Reamer said. “At night, the prison was so quiet, you could hear them hopping.”
<O
He described the sound: “Hearing hundreds of pins dropping.”<O
</OThrough all this, he did not regret taking a stand. He showed the same resolve later in life. In 1962, he was working at a steel plant near Detroit. His boss was fired. Reamer called the chairman of the board to protest. Later that day, Reamer was out of a job and headed back to Cincinnati, where he found work at Norwood’s now-leveled General Motors plant.<O
</O“I just won’t stand for injustice,” he explained. “From time to time, you have to stand your ground.”<O
</OHe shifted in his chair and groaned. Then, he apologized.<O
</O“My heart rate and blood pressure are real low today,” he said. “I just got back from dialysis. I go three days a week. My kidneys are on the fritz, have been ever since I came back from the war.”<O
That comes from daily beatings and standing at attention for 132 hours.<O
</ONot wanting to throw himself a pity party, Reamer started talking about how he felt when he came home to America in 1945. For the first time in two hours of reminiscing, his strong voice weakened.“When I left the country to go to the Philippines, my ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge,” he said softly. “When I came home, my plane flew over it.”
<O
</OHe paused. He struggled to keep his emotions from overtaking his voice.<O
“I still remember what I saw when I looked out the left window of that military transport plane loaded with wounded men,” he said.<O
</OHe paused again.<O
“It was,” he began, “the ... most .. . beautiful sight I have ever seen in my life.”<O
</OFrom his window seat, he looked down on a hill above the California coastline. Atop the hill, white stones spelled two words:<O
</OWelcome Home<O</O