Tuesday's column

It's a day West Covina resident Cal Plummer can't forget.

Plummer, 86, grew up in Pasadena. As an 18-year-old fresh out of Pasadena Junior College, he was aboard a destroyer on the Pacific Ocean between San Diego and Hawaii on that fateful day.

"I was very fortunate," he recalled. "As soon as they got hit, they sent us to look for two-man subs that might be headed to the California coast."

The United States had good reason to worry. The Japanese, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation the next day, were on the move in the Pacific.

"Yesterday the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.

"Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

"Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

"Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

"Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.

"And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island," Roosevelt concluded.

The Pacific fleet pretty much had been decimated. When the assault on Pearl HarborZZTO had ended, 2,400 were dead and 1,200 were wounded. A total of 18 ships and 300 planes were destroyed or damaged.

By the time Plummer's ship returned to Hawaii, he and his shipmates realized how thorough the destruction had been.

"It was a mess," he recalled. "There was four inches of tar and oil all over it. If you've been there since it's cleaned up now."

Shortly after the attacks, Plummer's brother, like so many other young men, went into the Army and was sent across the Atlantic Ocean to fight Nazis.

"He was drafted in," Plummer recalled. "He landed in Sicily and went all the way to Germany."

Cal's brother and so many other veterans of World War II no longer are here to remember their service.

"There's about 1,000 World War II veterans dying every day," Plummer said.

Michael Felix, commander of EL MonteZZSG's VFW post, said his unit has just "eight or nine" WWII vets left in the group.

During his service, Plummer never saw action. He transferred from the destroyer to the USS Aldebaran, a fast cargo ship based in San Francisco.

According to Wikipedia, Aldebaran visited Samoa, Tongatapu, New Caledonia and Espiritu Santo during the summer of 1942.

"Aldebaran loaded cargo at San Francisco and then embarked upon long, circuitous voyages," Wikipedia noted.

On one of those trips the ship picked up a downed Japanese airman and dropped him off at a brig on Guam before returning to duty.

Most of the rest of the war was spent traveling from port to port and back to San Francisco.

"I made 32 trips inside the Golden Gate. I didn't do anything, I'm lucky to be alive," Plummer said. "I just want people to remember days like Dec. 7 or 9/11 so that when we're all gone, people will be educated."