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NORWALK, Conn. Dominic Pallastro remembers aspects of his 1940s wartime service fondly such as running to grasp onto the back of a train as it began to leave without him. But ask him about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and all you'll get is a frown.
Arthur Pack, former chaplain at Norwalk's American Legion Post 12, says that's pretty standard. His 101-year-old mother, a Rowayton resident, lived through it. But, he said, "She doesn't talk about it."
On Wednesday, the 70th anniversary of the attack by Japan, is Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. "That was a huge thing that happened to this country," Pack said. "That's what brought us into the war. Pearl Harbor was just as important as 9-11, every bit, and never should be forgotten."
A man in his 30s from East Norwalk said younger people do not know the date of the Pearl Harbor attack. Pack, who lives in North Carolina now, agreed and said it's important to hold events that honor the memory of Pearl Harbor. The city will do just that, with a 10 a.m. ceremony at City Hall, where the names of 17 Connecticut residents who died at Pearl Harbor will be read.
Pack wasn't born but said the attack and war changed his family's lives. "It affected my parents and older brothers," he said. "They were living through the Depression, and it was the war that ended the Depression. My father wasn't working; they were eating hot dogs and beans, salt pork, that sort of thing. After the war started, he was working full time in the war plant. That's a sad way for it to be, but the fact of the matter is the war was got us out of the Depression."
"It was devastating to our parents," his wife, Lynn, said as they sat at the Legion on Tuesday evening. Everyone listened to the news on the radio back then, she said.
Pallastro was at the Norwalk Senior Center on Tuesday, where others, who are younger, remembered the attack.
Ed Gutlowski was 10 in 1941. His family sat by the radio a Victrola and radio combo and listened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. "We were all shook up," said Gutlowski, the oldest of four children and a native of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. All three of his uncles enlisted after the attack, and all came back. His Uncle Tony made a career out of the military, retiring after 30 years as an Army sergeant major.
Gutlowski enlisted in 1947 and was wounded in action in Korea.
Joan Stowe remembers the attack but not much else. "I was 4 years old, and we had just moved into our new house," she said. "We were at the kitchen table, and our new neighbor came running across and said to my father, 'Jack, we're in big trouble. They just got Pearl Harbor.'" Her father served as air raid warden at home. "I don't remember much about the war except the rationing," she said.
Al Buchetto also was 10 when the Japanese attacked. "I didn't live it. ... I heard it on the radio about Pearl Harbor, how we lost everything." One of his brothers was in Gen. George S. Patton's tank division and became a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne, which was eventually honored with a march down New York's Fifth Avenue. But he was wounded and came back a changed man. "He was on 100 percent disability," Buchetto said. "He was shell-shocked."
Buchetto served in the military, too, but not during war.
Pallastro said he was drafted after Pearl Harbor, right after he turned 19. His father had car trouble, and they arrived late for his train. He "ran like a fool" because he was "scared to be AWOL" before he even started his military career. Pallastro was eventually sent instead to England via the very rough North Sea. While crossing the Atlantic, he liked to hold onto the rail at the front of the ship and let the waves wash over him, until some Marines finally convinced him that he'd be arrested if he kept that up. "I thought that was fun, holding on. I grew up on the water."
Pallastro was in the Army and served in an ordnance group in England, France, the Netherlands, "the whole continent." They would go to the front to retrieve damaged equipment, repair it and return it. "We weren't infantry, but half the time we went past the infantry. They said, 'Get the equipment.'"
Pallastro said he was in the Battle of the Bulge and remembers German planes strafing everything. "They came in so low, that always fascinated me," Pallastro said. As he and his comrades shot at the planes, "We were hitting the chimneys."
He continued smiling as he remembered a comrade. "I had a friend who constantly got drunk. He'd go out, I'd have to drag him back. He was from Norwalk. I think he got killed in another outfit."
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