Speakers vow to never forget during Pearl Harbor event at Georgia museum
SAVANNAH ― Judy Roddy feels the emotional pull of Pearl Harbor every day of her life, not just on the anniversary of the attack that thrust the United States to enter World War II 84 years ago.
So as she stepped to a lectern Sunday to read a poem as part of a Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremony, her voice boomed with pride and not a trace of sadness.
She spoke of her first cousin, Clement Durr, a 19-year-old farm-boy from Nebraska who served as a gunner’s mate aboard the USS West Virginia. Durr was among the battleship’s 106 crew members killed as a result of the Japanese aerial assault. He escaped the sinking vessel but died four days later in a Hawaii hospital.
Roddy never knew Durr — she was born after his death — but understands what his sacrifice meant.
“Without Clement and others like him, we might not be speaking English right now,” Roddy said following Sunday’s event.
Roddy was among about 75 people, including dozens of members of the Navy League’s Savannah council, in attendance at the 22nd annual Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. The event is the lone Pearl Harbor remembrance commemoration held along the Georgia World War II Heritage Trail, a coalition of 11 museums and historic sites across the state.
The museum, located along I-95 near the Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport, is a fitting venue. It was created to highlight the World War II contributions of the Mighty Eighth Army Air Corps, a long-range bomber force.
Pearl Harbor was “the gateway for everything that was to come,” said retired Navy Capt. Leonard Jones, the ceremony’s keynote speaker, including the biggest naval air battle at Midway in the Pacific and the Mighty Eighth’s operations in Europe. The air corps is widely credited with helping expedite the defeat of Germany by destroying the munitions depots and factories that made up the Nazi war machine.
The Mighty Eighth’s roots tie directly to Pearl Harbor — it was formed in a Savannah armory a month after the attacks.
Sunday’s remembrance focused on the roughly 2,400 sailors and civilians killed on Dec. 7, 1941, in Hawaii. The museum’s director, Scott Loehr, spoke of the importance of commemorating the day at a time when the Navy reports only 12 Pearl Harbor attack survivors, all centenarians, remain alive.
In his remarks, Jones, the retired Navy captain, encouraged attendees to visit Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial, built atop the sunken battleship that is a tomb for more than 900 sailors killed that day.
Jones recalled his first experience at the Arizona, which came during his first duty tour in 1978. The sight of drops of leaking oil rising to the water’s surface from the Arizona’s fuel tanks is forever tattooed on his mind. “Black tears,” he called them.
“The Pearl Harbor attacks were intended to weaken America,” he said. “Instead, it awakened us.”
Roddy agrees. Her cousin’s death devastated her family, particularly her uncle, Clement Durr’s father. But she’s quick to tell her cousin’s story and those of other World War II heroes. The retiree works as a volunteer in the Mighty Eighth museum’s research library.
“All we owe to them now, all these years later,” she said, “is to never forget.”
About the Author
Adam Van Brimmer is a journalist who covers politics and Coastal Georgia news for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
