Remembering Pearl Harbor Four area residents survived the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor that caused the United States to enter WWII. Seated, from left, are Bill Henrickson, Clarence Koehler and Arlyn Welling. The fourth, Vern Whistler, is pictured separately. Standing, from left, are Margaret Henrickson and Ellie Welling. (Staples World photo by Tom Crawford) On this Veteran's Day, Staples has a distinction that few cities many times larger can claim.

This little city on the Minnesota prairie, far from any major ocean, today can claim to be the home of not one or two survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack nearly 68 years ago, but the home of four men who were there.

The local men get together on occasion, such as Veteran's Day and on that day very special to them, Dec. 7.

All four of the men today live in one or another of the Lakewood Health System housing altenatives.

Bill Henrickson and Clarence Koehler, both 88 years old, live at the Lakewood Manor apartments.

Arlyn Welling, 89, is at Lakewood Pines. Vern Whistler, perhaps the longest resident

Pearl Harbor veteran Vern Whistler, left, enjoyed a recent visit from Bill Henrickson, another veteran of Pearl Harbor. Four live in Staples. (Staples World photo by Tom Crawford) of Staples of these four men, is at the LHS Care Center.

All were young U.S. Navy men in 1941, assigned to ships that were moored that Sunday morning to docks or tied up at drydock at the U.S. Navy's largest base in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

"I was 21 years old, serving aboard the USS Argonne," Arlyn said. It was a destroyer tender, a repair ship. He boarded the ship July 4, 1939. "I was just out of boot camp then."

Arlyn and Vern both were aboard destroyer tenders at Pearl and both four years later were aboard ships that steamed into Toyko Bay in an unprecedented display of American naval power as Japanese leaders signed the peace agreements aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II.

Three of these Pearl suvivors served aboard battleships. Arlyn was on the USS Iowa at Toyko Bay. Vern was on the USS Whitney at Pearl and on the USS Lavaca at Tokyo Bay.

In a 1991 article in the Staples World Vern said he struggled to raise the flag on the Whitney while Japanese machine guns slashed across the ship.

"I had to duck down, the planes were coming in so low. The Whitney's deck was about 30 feet off the water and they were just a little higher than that," he recalled in 1991.

Bill Henrickson served the first part of his U.S. Navy hitch aboad the USS Nevada. His ship, he is very proud to state, was the only American ship at Pearl Harbor that managed to get underway and head for open water during the massive Japanese attack.

The crew paid for their efforts by attracting more

Japanese bombers, but perhaps

also saved their ship. "We lost 60 men aboard

the Nevada," Bill remembers. She was deliberately beached to avoid blocking the harbor entrance.

It took several weeks for the Nevada to be repaired, and during that time Bill was transferred to the light cruiser, the USS St. Louis.

Clarence was aboard the USS Pennsylvania, his home for 4-1/2 years after he joined the U.S. Navy at age 18.

"We came in (to Pearl) the night before the attack," Clarence said. The Pennsylvania tied up across from the Argonne, he recalled, when talking to Arlyn. The ships were strung out along Ford Island.

Henrickson agreed, saying the Nevada was moored next to the Arizona. In the first minutes of the attack, the Arizona had a shell explode in its forward magazine. It overturned as it sank, entombing most of the 1,177 men lost from her crew, with only 337 surviving.

She still rests at the bottom of the Pacific, with the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor now commemorating the 2,402 U. S. service personnel killed that day. Another 1,282 were wounded

The attack sank four U.S. Navy battleships (two of which were raised and returned to service later) and damaged four more. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers and one minelayer and destroyed 188 aircraft.

The battleships were the Arizona, Nevada, California, West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma and Maryland, along with the Pennsylvania.

Bill Henrickson spent much of the war aboard the St. Louis, seeing action from the South Pacific (Quadalcanal) to the Aleutian Islands.

Clarence also spent much of the war in the Pacific, crossing the Equator several times. The first time he was a pollywog and his crewmates got to initate him. Afterward, he was a shellback and got to enjoy the hazing of the newcomers.

Arlyn got to travel a little more. After Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to the battleship Iowa. In 1943, his ship was assigned a top secret mission. They left the Pacific at the Panama Canal and steamed to Virginia, where they retrofitted the admiral's quarters for a VIP, adding a bathtub.

When they left, with an escort of destroyers, they were headed for North Africa, carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They entered the Mediterranean and dropped him off at Oran, in Algeria.

The president was destined for Tehran to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin as the top three allied leaders plotted war and perhaps post-war stategy.

Arlyn has no idea how he traveled when not aboard the Iowa. "We dropped him off at first because they thought we had U-boats (German submarines) trailing us. It was too dangerous."

A couple weeks later, the Iowa put in at Dakar on the west coast of Africa and picked up Roosevelt for the return trip across the Atlantic.

Arlyn, who spent seven years in the U.S. Navy and 21 years with the U.S. Naval Reserve, was a chief warrant officer. "Our skipper on the Iowa had been Roosevel's chief of staff earlier in the war. We figured that was why we got the job."

Clarence and Bill were both gunner's mates, part of the crew firing the big guns of the battle wagons.

Vern was a quartermaster and spent most of the war at sea in the Pacific, he noted in 1991, from Samoa to Okinawa.

All came home to loved ones, with medals to show for their valor. Now each has memories and stories they love to tell. But they each know the horror of fighting and battle, they all know someone who did not come home.