(Owego, NY) – On National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Wednesday, Dec. 7, Owego and Tioga County will never forget its first WWII casualty who is among the 1,117 gallant sailors and marines entombed and their shipmates who gave their lives in action on the USS Arizona.
Seaman First Class Delmar Dale Sibley of Owego was killed in action aboard the Battleship USS Arizona at age 23, and 23 days before his 24th birthday. Delmar lived with his uncle and aunt, Owego Police Chief Earl Sibley and his wife Lucy, while working at Endicott Johnson-Owego.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt labeled Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, as the “date which will live in infamy.” The event single-handedly catapulted America into World War II. American flags will fly at half staff at the Tioga County Veterans Memorial on Dec. 7.
The Pearl Harbor Remembrance Service for its Heroes and Survivors and Families begins at 12:55 p.m. – the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor – appropriately in the Delmar Dale Sibley Memorial Hall of the Glenn A. Warner Post 1371 Veterans of Foreign Wars. Commander and Vietnam Veteran Dean Morgan encourages attendance by the public and all veterans. Also anyone who has visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial.
VFW Honor Guard’s Steve Palinosky bugles the National Anthem. Deacon Michael Donovan offers the invocation. Colors by the VFW Honor Guard.
Martin Wilcox of the Tioga County Historical Society found a story of Aaron Putnam Stores III of Owego who led a squadron of 17 PBY’s (flying boats) to Pearl Harbor. Also docked at Pearl Harbor, the USS Tracy named for Owegoan Benjamin Tracy, the late Secretary of the Navy under President Benjamin Harrison.
Gordon Ichikawa will tell about his mother Kiyo spending three years in a Japanese-American Internment Camp during WWII. His dad Tom enlisted in the Army on Pearl Harbor Day. He was wounded in combat in the European Theatre and is the Recipient of the Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medals. He is a former Owego VFW Commander.
Pearl Harbor Survivor families will share precious memories. Five Tioga County servicemen were stationed at Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning. One seaman made the supreme sacrifice and is still aboard the USS Arizona. Four became Pearl Harbor Survivors after returning home from other South Pacific combat. All four are now deceased.
Army Air Corps’ Charles “Bill” Kennedy of Owego was at Hickam Field when a flight of some 50 dive bombers and fighters struck where A-20, B-18 and B-17 were parked wingtip to wingtip. Kennedy was with an Air Force squadron of about 240 people. “We lost ten men and about 32 were wounded, lost all our airplanes and our barracks were pretty well shot up,” Kennedy said.
Lester Dunham of Owego was one of the first from Tioga County to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1939. At the time of the attack he was on guard duty patrolling the docks at Pearl Harbor. The combat Marine fought in the Guadalcanal campaign with comrades in his 1st Marine Division. There he escaped from a fox hole just before it blew up.
Army Tech Sergeant Donald Stocks of Owego was also at Hickam Field. He was a cook on the day of the attack. He left the kitchen and grabbed a rifle to fight. Back home he did not talk about that day.
Army Sergeant Richard Hopkins of Berkshire enlisted April 2, 1940, and arrived in Honolulu June 17, 1940. He was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks at the time of the attack.
Hopkins remembers “the planes coming in and bombs dropping. It’s something you do not forget.” He recalls looking out of his barracks. “They were hauling wounded on cars and trucks, anything they could get them on to rush them to the hospital.”
Hopkins also spent four months on the front lines at Guadalcanal in charge of two machine gun squads against the Japanese who “would not surrender.” He vividly remembers a Japanese bullet whizzing by his head.
Hopkins is the recipient of the Bronze Star Medal – the nation’s fourth highest award – for his meritorious service in a combat zone.
Wednesday’s tribute ceremony is to keep alive the memory of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and to honor the heroism and sacrifice of American military at Oahu, Hawaii, that fateful day.