Many of our veterans have now told their stories. And some have even recorded them for posterity. These three residents of Orange County, California, decided to record their life stories on veteran videos in 2008. Now, in 2010, only two of these three are still with us.

Jim Peirano: fighting back at Pearl Harbor
Jim Peirano fired at Japanese bombers from the deck of his submarine USS Dolphin during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He recalled with horror how the Arizona exploded, spreading burning oil over the water, burning hundreds of them. Jim remembered the looks of the young Japanese pilots as they swooped down to drop their bombs. “They had scarves and everything. You could see really well because they were flying so low. It was just like you see in the movies!”

Jim was encouraged throughout the interview. Happy to have witnessed so much history and somehow able to contain her grief at the terrible loss. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Jim’s submarine set out to bring the war to the Japanese:

“We didn’t know anything about fighting a war,” he said. “We knew how to dive and exercise the submarine. But the rest we had to learn as the war progressed.”

Jim was in the battles of Midway and Tarawa and served in the Solomon Islands, where he helped save a group of 29 missionary nuns and children. He was in the middle of the “Battle of Japan”, as he called it, his submarine sank many enemy ships. He stressed that US forces would drop leaflets on the civilian population before the bombings, warning them to evacuate, a fact that, according to him, is often overlooked.

Jim left the service highly decorated and with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and then returned to visit Australia, where he introduced the sport of bowling to that country. As he told these stories in his veteran’s video, Jim’s eyes twinkled. I was back in the moment.

Jim died last year at his Laguna Woods home.

Julian Ertz: his friend begged to be shot
Former footballer Julian Ertz, still alive and now in his 90s and also a resident of Laguna Woods, California, was eager to fight the war in Europe and trained as a pilot and navigator. In December 1943, Julian and his crew took the “southern” route to England, through Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Natal, Brazil, then crossed the Atlantic to Dakar, Marrakech, and finally Great Britain. The plane was stocked with sweets for the deprived British children of war that the crew expected to find.

Tragedy struck Julian and his crew when his B-24 J Liberator, named “Bachelors’ Baby” due to the bachelor status of its crew, crashed during takeoff in Wales. As he recounts in his veteran’s video, the plane was loaded with 50 caliber shells. Julian suffered a broken back and walks with some difficulty to this day, but he still considers himself lucky. He was able to take refuge from the explosive bullets behind the plane’s engine, which had dislodged. Five of its ten crew members and a sixth man, an unfortunate hitchhiker, died. Booster, the pet dog, also died in the accident.

He remembers to this day the screams of Sammy Offutt as he burned alive amid the rubble, begging Julian to end his misery with his pistol. Julian could not obey, he did not have the weapon at hand. You don’t know what you would have done if you had. Julian returned to the United States in a full-body cast, then studied law and became a lawyer.

Sandy Ross: “It wasn’t heroic. It was exciting.”
Sandy Ross, who turns 88 in December and lives in Lake Forest, California, wanted to become a pilot from his days as a Lockheed riveter, riding in the cabins of the assembly line. Before America’s involvement in the war, he begged his father to let him go north to Canada to join. His father refused. He did not have to wait a long time. Sandy and her brother joined the Army Air Corps and soon they were both piloting P-47 Thunderbolts against German forces in Europe.

Proudly wearing his remaining brown bomber jacket and officer’s hat during his veteran’s video interview, WWII veteran Sandy Ross recalled some of his 51 missions in Europe. When asked about the dogfight that earned him the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and a promotion to Second Lieutenant, he said: “It wasn’t heroic. It was exciting. It was fun.”

Our WWII veterans experienced some of the most dramatic moments of the 20th century. It is important that their stories are captured for their families and future generations. Most of our WWII veterans are in their 80s and 90s and there is a real urge to record their stories.

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