Donald Stratton - Unti Pearl Harbor Memoir LP: A USS Arizona Sailor’s Extraordinary Memoir of Infamy, Survival, and Heroism at Pearl Harbor

Dons story came to me as a gift.

I had relocated to Los Angeles to try to sell several projects I had written. But nothing sold, and I was feeling a little disheartened when...

I got a phone call from my oldest daughter, Gretchen, who lives in the Colorado Springs, Colorado, area. She was so excited she couldnt get the words out quick enough. Dad, I just heard a man interviewed on the radio who was a survivor from the USS Arizona you know the one that was sunk at Pearl Harborand his names Don Stratton and Dad his storys great and the interviewer said he was amazed it hadnt been made into a movie and Dad he lives here in Colorado Springs and he hasnt written a book, either, and he lives in Colorado Springs and Dad youd be the perfect one to do it so what do you think?

I was so touched by her call that I checked the story out on the Internet. Sure enough, there was a Don Stratton who was a survivor from the USS Arizona, and sure enough, he did live in Colorado Springs. His address and phone number were there, too, so I called him, saying something like, Is this Don Stratton?... Im Ken Gire. Im a writer, and you dont know me, but...

And I told him the story I just told you, about my daughter calling me, and I asked if he had any interest in writing a book about his experience. He said he had wanted to for some time, but he didnt have a writer to do it. My literary agent, Greg Johnson, lives in a suburb of Denver, and I asked Don if my agent and I could stop by and visit with him about the possibility of working together.

Greg and I met with Don, his wife, and his son, and when we got to hear more of his story, we were both genuinely and deeply moved. Which is what every writer wants to feel about a story he writes. What every agent wants to feel, too.

As it turned out, the seventy-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 2016, was approaching, and I talked to my agent about getting the book out before the anniversary. He said publishers dont like to rush a book because its a lot of pressure on everyone, and they have enough pressure as it is. But, he said, you never know....

Long story short, Peter Hubbard at HarperCollins loved it, wanted it, bought it.

I met with Don several times. He and his wife, Velma, were so gracious to me. His son Randy, too. One of the days when I came to Dons house to interview him, it was Velmas ninetieth birthday. A vase with eighteen red, long-stem roses sat on the counter.

And he says hes not romantic.

When I was finished interviewing him, I asked Don how he would like to be remembered. He said, That I had led a good life, as a Christian. That I had a wonderful family. And that I was one of the people who defended our country in time of crisis. He paused a beat, then added, One of the many.

That pause told me so much about him. He is not a person who likes attention. And hes not a person to take credit for what hes done. If there is credit due him, its always a shared credit. He never takes it for himself.

Don Stratton is one of the last of the greatest generation. Being around him and his wife was a gift, too. Not just the story. Them. It felt so good to be able to use my skills as a writer to serve such a man and to tell such a story. In the process, I was touched by both, the story and the man. I am so grateful.

When I asked what message he would like to leave behind, he said: That people would remember Pearl Harbor so that it would never happen again.

I truly hope Dons story does that.

It did that for me.

I hope it did that for you, too.

Thank you for taking the time to read the book.

And Gretchen, thank you, sweetheart. I love you ten bags full!

Ken Gire

P. P. S. Besides my daughter and Don, there are two others I would like to acknowledge.

Peter Hubbard, executive editor at William Morrow/HarperCollins.

He loved the story from the moment he read the proposal, making a pre-emptive offer to secure it for his publishing house. He worked tirelessly for the book you now hold in your hands, fighting for everything from the title to the cover design, and for every word in three sets of revisions. I have never worked with a finer editor.

Greg Johnson, founder of WordServe Literary.

He is the best agent I know. And he is a better person than he is an agent. He has been one of the great friends of my life. Because of him, I am a better man; and without him, the book you now hold in your hands would have never been written.

Ken Gire and his daughter, Gretchen Anthony.

Greg Johnson, our literary agent at WordServe Literary.

Peter Hubbard, our editor and champion at William Morrow.

My son Randy.

Special thanks to Joe George and Clarence Dobby Dobson.

To all the doctors, nurses, and medics who treated so many of us.

And to the special ladies who gave blood.

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Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their mento feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the mens faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break.

John Steinbeck,

The Grapes of Wrath

What I saw that December morning in 1941, what all of us survivors witnessed, was the stuff of nightmares. When the living go back to walk among the dead, even in memory, it comes at a price. Can I afford it? I wonder. Can I keep going back thereto that day, to those images?

I wear to this day the physical scars from that attack, never letting me forget that terrible date. But, like the rest of those who survived that day, I have other wounds, ones that cant be covered up with slacks and long-sleeved shirts. Scars on a part of me no one can see.

I wasnt always like that.

I was once just a boy from Nebraska.

I grew up the son of a corn husker who lost all he had in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. He didnt have much, so he didnt have much to lose. But there were other, deeper losses he incurred, more devastating than the cost of anything material. His dreams, small as they were, were gone. Much of who he was and thought he might become, crumbled. That agonizingly long decade was like a biblical plague of locusts that swarmed down on the small cornfield that was his life, stripping those things from him. From all of us.

The 1,512 sailors on the Arizona came out of those years, along with all the other men who fought in World War II. The Depression was the forge that formed us. When the fight came to us, we were ready for it. Like steel coming out of the blast furnaces, shaped into girders, then dipped into vats of oil to temper them. There was a strength you couldnt see on the surface. Because of it, we were somehow able to bear the weight that a world at war placed on our shoulders.