{"id":45486,"date":"2023-12-07T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/12\/07\/how-embracing-a-former-enemy-at-pearl-harbor-ended-one-veterans-war\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:55:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:55:54","slug":"how-embracing-a-former-enemy-at-pearl-harbor-ended-one-veterans-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/home\/2023\/12\/07\/how-embracing-a-former-enemy-at-pearl-harbor-ended-one-veterans-war\/","title":{"rendered":"How embracing a former enemy at Pearl Harbor ended one veteran\u2019s war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s note: This <\/i>piece was first published<\/i><\/a> in <\/i>The War Horse<\/i><\/a>, an award-winning nonprofit news organization dedicated to educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their <\/i>newsletter<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first week of December 1991, my wife, Lin, and I met our friend Richard Fiske for dinner at the Chart House in Honolulu, Hawaii, as we had done on many occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d been stationed at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii<\/a>, for three years in the late 1960s. After I retired from the federal government, Lin and I moved to Oahu, where we lived aboard our sailboat in Ala Wai Harbor<\/a>. By the 80s, Lin worked at what was then Banana Republic Travel & Safari, and she first met Mr. Fiske there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He volunteered for the USS <\/a>Arizona<\/i><\/a> Memorial<\/a> and liked the sort of clothing sold by Banana Republic. That day, he walked in wearing his tour guide vest and a World War II Arizona Survivor garrison cap, and soon, he was one of Lin\u2019s regular customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one visit, Lin told Mr. Fiske that her father planned to visit us in Hawaii\u2014his first trip to the island since World War II. He\u2019d sailed into Pearl Harbor on a minesweeper and later served as a sailor aboard the USS Natrona.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Fiske encouraged Lin to bring her father to the Arizona <\/i>Memorial and ask for him so they could meet. Of course, we did, and the two World War II veterans hit it off wonderfully. That meeting also began our tradition of bringing friends to meet Mr. Fiske. We\u2019d always call to let him know we were coming, and he\u2019d meet us at the memorial. Afterward, we\u2019d walk to the Chart House restaurant and break bread together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Fiske was a jovial man, but he was unusually quiet over this particular dinner in December 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Burning and damaged ships at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 1941. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fifty years earlier, Mr. Fiske served as a young private and bugler on the USS West Virginia. He stood on the quarterdeck on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the second wave of Japanese planes flew up The Slot\u2014the Kolekole Pass through the Wai\u02bbanae mountains on Oahu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Fiske recalled that as the dive-bombers wreaked havoc, he saw a plane headed straight for the West Virginia. He told us it came so close he could make out the pilot\u2019s face. A tremendous explosion followed. Mr. Fiske took cover with the rest of the men until they received orders to abandon ship. Mr. Fiske jumped overboard into the acrid water, slick with fuel, hot with flames, and alive with the terrible cries of his injured shipmates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was Mr. Fiske\u2019s introduction into World War II. Three years later, he landed on Iwo Jima, which he once described as \u201c36 straight days of Pearl Harbor.\u201d<\/a> At the war\u2019s end, he joined the Air Force and served in Korea and Vietnam before retiring as a master sergeant in 1969\u2014the same year I left Hickam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told us that despite all he\u2019d witnessed and experienced, the pilot\u2019s face at Pearl Harbor still haunted him 50 years later. He\u2019d woken up in cold sweats countless times over the decades, even as he served as a tour guide near the very place that changed him and the course of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill you be at the 50th anniversary ceremonies at Pearl Harbor?\u201d a quiet Mr. Fiske finally asked us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we answered that we planned to be there, he seemed unsettled, and we asked if he was OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\t