The first memory Wendy Minniear Masters has of the world will always be a nightmare, she says.
She’s told the story over and over. Masters, 77, of Valparaiso, was 3 when her family was living on Apuni Street, overlooking Pearl Harbor. Masters said she remembers hearing her mother yell to her father, Navy Ensign Carl Minniear, on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941
Minniear, who was holding little Wendy, ran outside to see Japanese fighter pilots bombing everything in sight. One plane, she said she remembers, flew so close to her and her father that it seemed they could have touched it.
Minniear then jumped in the family car and told his family — Masters, her mother and her 6-week-old sister — goodbye and that he’d be back as soon as he could. He didn’t return until 1943, she said.
(Retired) Capt. James Wiltshire, U.S. Naval Reserve, filled in for James Laud Sr., Indiana chairman for the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, during a ceremony Monday after the annual Pearl Harbor Memorial at Main Square Park in Highland. Reading from Laud’s remarks, Wiltshire said Pearl Harbor united the country like never before.
“The surprise and unprovoked attack by the Empire of Japan on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since,” he said.
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The country must never turn its back when acts of aggression are shown to it, Wiltshire said. Doing so, he said, sends a message of weakness to those who would cause the nation harm.
“No U.S. soldier or citizen should die in vain,” he said.
Only 14 Indiana members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association remain, Wiltshire said. Of the 60,000 American soldiers and sailors and airmen at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, about 2,100 are still involved in their local chapters, he said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.