A Pearl Harbor survivor in Barstow

BARSTOW • Growing up in the countryside outside of Honolulu, Hawaii, longtime Barstow resident Sam “Simon” Nasario got used to hearing planes fly overhead practicing military maneuvers.

But the planes that flew over the island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941, were there to attack.

Nasario, 90, was a new Army draftee going through basic training at the Schofield Barracks when Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. He had grown up on a sugar plantation, raised by his aunt and his grandmother while his mother was working as a housekeeper for a family in Honolulu.

Nasario was home at his grandmother’s on his first leave from training when the Japanese planes struck.

“My grandmother came into my room and said, ‘Come out and look at the planes flying low with fire coming out of their wings,’” Nasario remembered.

They watched at least four planes fly low over the house, he recalled. They assumed the low-flying planes were just another maneuver until they heard the machine gun fire and saw the bombs dropping in the distance. The sound was like rocks falling from the sky, Nasario said. Even then, people didn’t immediately realize that the island was under attack.

“At first they said, ‘How crazy to use real live ammunition,’ but then we realized those weren’t our planes,” he said. “... It was a nightmare. We couldn’t believe anybody would have the nerve to attack the United States.”

He was worried for his aunt and grandmother, but the Japanese avoided hitting civilian targets, Nasario said.

He hurried back to the Army post, where the soldiers were sent out to different locations with rifles to guard against a possible land attack that never came.

A few months later, Nasario found himself guarding the first Japanese prisoner-of-war to be captured by American troops, a man who swam ashore from a grounded submarine on Dec. 8, 1941. The man was sent to Sand Island, an internment camp for Italian, Japanese and German nationals. Nasario was stationed as a guard there for about four months.

“It was kind of dull, just walking around the encampment there, making sure no one was trying to get away,” he said.

After the war, harsh feelings lingered between some Hawaiians and the Japanese citizens who immigrated to work in the sugar fields, he recalled. The younger generation was generally willing to let the past go, Nasario said, but some of their parents held onto the grudge.

When the war ended and he was discharged from service in 1945, Nasario went back to his civilian life without looking back. He worked his old job as a mechanic at the sugar plantation for a while, then headed to the main land to visit an Army buddy in Kansas.

There Nasario fell for his friend’s sister, Amalia. The couple married in 1946 and moved to Barstow in 1953 after Sam got a job as an electrician with the Santa Fe Railroad. They raised three children in Barstow, where they still live in the same house they bought about 45 years ago.

Sam doesn’t make a big deal out of his military service. He didn’t hang onto his uniform or post his discharge papers on the wall. But he still keeps up with some of his old Army friends. And if he’s feeling well enough Tuesday morning, Nasario may be out at the Mountain View Memorial Park for the Veterans Day celebration, sporting a baseball cap that reads “Pearl Harbor survivor.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or asewell@desertdispatch.com

Veterans Day in Barstow

Info box: Veterans Day 2008 will be observed to honor all Veterans at Mountain View Memorial Park, 37067 Irwin Road, at 11 a.m. Tuesday