WILMINGTON — A Wilmington resident, the late John Arvai Sr., was on duty as a U.S. Navy Electrician’s Mate on a gunboat in Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes attacked the base on Dec. 7, 1941.
He and others were sent out on a gig (small boat) to rescue survivors, he recalled in the Dec. 7, 1991 Wilmington News Journal.
“It was a horrible sight,” he said. “We watched the Arizona blow up. The attack was over in two hours.”
Arvai was later assigned to the USS San Juan anti-aircraft cruiser that fought in battles in the Solomon Islands. Later, he was a submariner on the USS Salmon, which sank 22 Japanese cargo ships and war ships.
A few days ago, Arvai’s son John Arvai Jr. recounted some things he remembers his father saying in connection with Pearl Harbor.
A week before the attack, wrestling matches were held and Arvai lost in a few seconds. After the attack, when Arvai was in the small boat, he recovered the body of his wrestling opponent.
Following the devastating strike on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, Arvai was sent to Massachusetts for a new ship. There he met his future wife and, in fact, they got married before he shipped out and about a year passed before they saw each other again.
John Arvai Jr. was skeptical about one story his father told until a shipmate verified it. On Dec. 8, 1941, the day following the attack, Arvai went in and canceled his life insurance, insisting he was not going to be killed in the ensuing war with Japan. He survived the war and shortly after getting out, he signed up for a life insurance policy.
Dale Minton, who would later become an insurance agent as well as Wilmington’s mayor, recalled in 1991, “I was a high school senior and was hanging out downtown when we heard of the attack. The Wilmington News Journal put out an extra edition and I can remember the newsboys shouting all over town.
“Funny, but none of us knew where Pearl Harbor was.
“The radio and newspapers carried nothing else. We knew about Hitler and the invasions. Half of the world was at war but an attack on us by the Japanese was too remote for consideration.”
Minton later joined the Army and fought in Europe, including in the Battle of the Bulge.
Wilbert Ward of Wilmington told the News Journal in 1991 that, on Dec. 7, 1941 he and his father “were sitting in the old Clark restaurant at the Fife-Bosworth Building at Main and South when we heard the news of Pearl Harbor. Ward later joined the Army and fought in Europe.
“Most of the Wilmington boys I knew came back (from the war),” he told the News Journal in 1991. “But not a good friend, Kenny Williams, who was killed in Luxembourg.”
