A Day of Dark Memories

The old men gathered in the early Saturday morning mist, some wearing medals and pins and hats, others in military dress, others wearing Hawaiian shirts. They’d come to visit dark memories.

“Pearl Harbor” read the sign outside Edwards Newport Cinemas in Newport Beach. For many, the two words were enough for conversation as they waited for the movie to begin.

Many veterans did not want to talk about the battle and instead just wanted to watch, they said, for reasons they’d rather keep to themselves.

The movie--a highly-anticipated, $140-million picture--opened Friday after much debate about race and historical accuracy. It was specially shown at 8 a.m. Saturday in honor of Memorial Day and to raise funds for Orange County Veterans Charities in Santa Ana.

About 300 people attended: an old man with medals and a face wrinkled like a bloodhound, some widowers, some who brought three generations of family to give their relatives a glimpse of what the surprise attack on Dec. 7, 1941, was like.

USS Arizona Victim ‘Is Still in It’

And then there was Pauline Bearden, 72, of Newport Beach, who came to the movie alone. Her only companion was a letter, brown and worn from the years, sent by her brother Harry who was stationed in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on the USS Arizona, where he died at 22. Bearden was 12 when she received it. The letter is full of questions about school and about the life of any 12-year-old in the 1940s.

Bearden, who looked as if she were looking for a place to rest her head, said she often carries the letterwith her--always around Memorial Day--as if it were part of her brother’s soul.

The letter, she said, haunts her, in a way, but it somehow seems right to carry it.

During the movie, footage of the USS Arizona made her eyes water. Several years ago, she visited Pearl Harbor and the monument above where the battleship rests on the harbor’s floor.

“He is still in it,” Bearden said. The oil bubbles that continue to rise from the ship made it seem “like he is talking to me.”

Only one who attended the special screening Saturday was a Pearl Harbor veteran: Ralph Siegfreid, 80, of Torrance. Before the movie started, the former Marine staff sergeant stood up to applause, and his hard face did not move. Like the others, he said, he had come to honor Memorial Day and felt no more distinguished than any other veteran in the theater.

He said he watched the movie because of the preciousness of remembering but also to appraise its accuracy and whether it portrayed the emotions he and others had felt that day.

Though he had little to say about it, one scene--in which Japanese fighters were readied to bomb secondary targets at Pearl Harbor (such as more distant air bases)--conjured up memories.

Siegfreid worked at a secondary air base. “It was like in the movie. . . . I saw all the planes up there, flying above us,” he said. “I got shot,” he said, and even that “is worth remembering.” He was awarded the Purple Heart.

Others present found it difficult to talk about the movie. Reed Sprinkel, an Army pilot who flew bombers and radar missions from 1943 to 1945, said, “Of course, a lot of it is hard to put into words and hard to explain. A movie like this can say a lot . . . somebody like me can’t.”

The movie wasn’t just about a battle, Sprinkel said. It also was about romance, about how the war entered three lives and rearranged them in unpredictable ways, and about race and heroism. Perhaps, he said, it left out some of the complexities--the fear, the quivering hands, the rawness of being a fighter--but that was OK, if it meant a younger generation could catch a glimpse of history.

Realism is beside the point, said George Grupe, 79, a World War II bomber pilot. The movie summoned memories--ugly but precious, nonetheless--that might be forgotten had they not been placed on film, he said. People can forget.

“I watched to honor the memory of the [soldiers who were there] . . . even if I wasn’t there.”