Dec 7, 2016 4 min read

Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /usr/web/cs-washington.ogdennews.com/wp-content/themes/News_Core_2023_WashCluster/includes/single/strategically_placed_photos_article.php on line 412

Notice: Trying to get property 'term_id' of non-object in /usr/web/cs-washington.ogdennews.com/wp-content/themes/News_Core_2023_WashCluster/includes/single/strategically_placed_photos_article.php on line 412

Editor’s note: This article originally published Sunday, December 7, 2003.

The military always looms as a career option, and back in 1941, Alexander Dyga decided that might be the way to go.

“On my 18th birthday, I headed down to the old post office and enlisted in the Army,” said Dyga, now 80.

He learned he’d be shipped overseas and had the opportunity to choose from several locations in the Pacific.

“I said, ‘Send me to Hawaii. Where’s that?'” recalled the Finleyville native.

Many Americans probably were a bit hazy about the details of what would become our 50th state – until the events of Dec. 7, 1941, put the islands squarely in the national consciousness.

Dyga was in Pearl Harbor that day, as were seven other members of the Keystone Chapter of the National Pearl Harbor Survivors Association who gathered together last week. A luncheon in their honor at Country Meadows Retirement Community in South Fayette Township gave them an opportunity to reminisce.

Although each of the veterans in attendance has passed his 80th birthday, they still have strong recollections about the attacks that brought the United States into World War II.

“I remember that like it was yesterday,” said Dyga, now a resident of Kilbuck Township, Allegheny County. He was near Schofield Barracks, helping tend to some 900 horses and mules, which represented a key form of Army transportation six decades ago.

“We didn’t have helicopters,” he explained. “Everything was packed on mules.”

He was looking forward to an upcoming leave that Sunday morning when he noticed something amiss in the sky.

“We saw these four aircraft coming in, and I told my buddy, ‘That’s not our aircraft!'” The soldiers saw the airplanes make a circle around Wheeler airfield, then commenced bombing about 300 yards from the stables, which began taking hits shortly afterward.

“They thought it was an ordnance building, so they started strafing it,” Dyga explained. No animals were hurt, but the just-arrived shipment of oats and hay was full of lead pellets, meaning the soldiers had to sift through the feed to remove the metal.

While Dyga was dealing with frightened livestock, Theodore Wozniak was aboard the USS Maryland, one of the many battleships docked off Ford Island in Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning.

“When the attack first started, I was just about ready to go to church services aboard the Oklahoma,” said Wozniak, 84, of Scott Township. “If they would have struck 15 minutes later, I probably wouldn’t be here.”

The USS Oklahoma took five torpedo hits, rolled and capsized, resulting in more than 400 men killed or missing. The attack put the ship, docked next to the Maryland, permanently out of commission.

Wozniak’s ship took two bomb hits, one in the forecastle and the other in the stern, but was shielded from heavier damaged by the Oklahoma and managed to return antiaircraft fire. Also, the crew was able to send firefighting parties to aid the other ships.

“We were the only battleship that left Pearl Harbor, and we were back in the States for Christmas,” Wozniak recalled. The Maryland went on to perform admirably through the duration of World War II.

When the war ended in August 1945, Floyd Laughlin was at the same place he was when it started: Pearl Harbor.

“I was there when they dropped the big ones on Japan,” said Laughlin, 86, a McDonald resident and longtime Keystone Chapter president.

In December 1941, he was stationed at Fort Kamehameha, also known as Fort Kam. He still carries a photograph taken shortly before the attack of himself near a Jeep. Laughlin later pulled a piece of shrapnel out of the Jeep’s tire when changing it, and he has kept the metal to this day.

About the attack, he confirms the story that has come down through history: “It was a total surprise.”

At the time, he qualified as a newlywed. As Laughlin tells it, he was married May 31, 1941, and was drafted June 10. He and his wife, Dorothy, weathered his years in the service and this year celebrated their 62nd anniversary.

Laughlin has returned to Pearl Harbor on several occasions and still keeps an eye out for World War II documentaries.

“I always watch when they have something like that on the History Channel,” he said. “It brings back memories.”

Even after all these years, though, the veterans don’t need television to recall what happened.

“It will be on the mind the rest of your life, I’ll tell you,” said Dyga.