Pearl Harbor survivor remembers: ‘All hell broke loose’

Edward Waszkiewicz, 95, is a Pearl Harbor survivor who lives inOxnard. He went to the 50th anniversary 25 years ago with his family.(Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack on Pearl Harbor led to the U.S. involvement in World War II.

Sitting inside his home today where he lives with a caregiver, Waszkiewicz, now 95 years old, recalled some of the details of his time in the Navy.

Waszkiewicz, born in 1921, wanted to join the military at age 17 but had to wait until 1939 when he turned 18.

Joining the Navy was a chance to see the world, but it was also a way to help his Polish immigrant parents, who owned a farm in Michigan but were having financial difficulties.

His first assignment was aboard the carrier USS Enterprise. He eventually was assigned to Pearl Harbor to work with the firefighting group.

Ed Waszkiewicz, shown in a photo taken around 1939. He survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

On the morning of Dec. 7, Waszkiewicz was on duty, driving a firetruck to the dock where the oil tanker USS Neosho was pumping gasoline and other fuel into Ford Island fuel tanks.

He looked up to see three planes swooping down on the southern side of the island. From where he was standing, he first thought they were U.S. planes — until they started dropping bombs.

The island shook when the first bomb hit. Another plane started machine-gunning the dock. When the battleship USS Arizona was hit, about 200 yards away, Waszkiewicz had a full view.

“The explosion was so violent," he recalled. "I thought the end of the world was coming. Pieces of the ship fell everywhere.”

Waszkiewicz had jumped into the water to avoid being hit by the second plane’s machine gun. He ended up getting back on the dock, got back into his truck and drove back to the firehouse. He went out again with the fire crew and began fighting the fires ignited by explosives.

Waszkiewicz also witnessed the USS Shaw and USS Oklahoma being bombed, and he saw the USS Oklahoma roll over on its side.

Solar Storms heading for earth-could disrupt life as you know it

Solar storms

If solar storms as intense as the ones recorded in the last 200 years strike now, it could wreak total havoc as we are now 100 times more dependent on technology than we were back then.  Regarding cycles, we are fast entering a period in which a massive storm could strike.  The following excerpts illustrate that this threat is very real and what could potentially take place if a strong solar storm were to hit the earth now.

Solar storms take place when the sun’s surface erupts and spews radiation or electrically charged particles toward Earth. The more frequent minor storms may cause some radio interference and create the Northern Lights spectacle known as the aurora borealis. But every few decades can see a huge solar storm that releases the energy of 1 billion hydrogen bombs.

What will humans look like in 100 years?

We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals — futurist Juan Enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, Enriquez sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we'll have to transform our own bodies if we hope to explore and live in places other than Earth.

Rabindranath Tagore in 1908: ‘I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live’

The creator of the national anthem and his views on nationalism, “freedom of mind” and opinions “forcibly made alike”.

Rabindranath Tagore (Illustration: Subrata Dhar)

In 1908, Rabindranath Tagore wrote a letter to his friend, A M Bose, and said, “Patriotism can’t be our final spiritual shelter. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.” Three years after he wrote this letter — part of Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, published by Cambridge University Press in 1997 — his composition, Jana Gana Mana, was sung for the first time at the Calcutta session of the Congress. Now, 105 years later, as a Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Amitava Roy makes it mandatory for movie halls to play Jana Gana Mana and for people present to stand up as part of their “sacred obligation” to the national anthem, Tagore’s composition has come to symbolise nationalism — something the Nobel laureate was not only critical of, but had famously described as “carnivorous and cannibalistic”.