Callaway residents remember Pearl Harbor

Virgil "Jack" McBride, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, recounts his memories to Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society board member Susan Krumm.
Virgil "Jack" McBride, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, recounts his memories to Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society board member Susan Krumm.

On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, two Callaway County residents came to the Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society to record their memories of that day.

Jim Davis's brother Walter served in the Navy and was aboard the USS Arizona when the attack came.

"He was in the engine room," Davis said. "The bomb came down the smokestack."

Walter was the first Callawegian to die in World War II.

Davis was only four years old on Dec. 7, 1941, but he can remember his parents talking about the day.

"At first, he was just reported missing in action," he said. "My mother didn't know for three days whether he was gone or not."

Virgil McBride - known by all as Jack - was older. To 15-year-old McBride, Pearl Harbor seemed far away.

"The day that I heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, I knew nothing at all about where Pearl Harbor was," he said.

All he knew about Hawaii was that it had pretty beaches and dancing girls. It was later, when the St. Louis Post Dispatch came, that it sunk in that America was at war. For the next several days, he and his friends stuck close to his family's radio.

"We heard just bits of what was happening," he said. "We were being knocked off the map by the Japanese and we were afraid - what's going to happen?"

McBride worried that the Japanese might invade America. And as the war went on and he approached the age of eligibility for the draft, he realized that he himself might be conscripted. As a black man, he had reservations about the idea.

"I can't go to the movies in Fulton through the front door," he remembered thinking at the time. "Why do we need to go to war?"

He remembers black community members gathering to talk about those and similar topics.

In 1943, McBride was drafted. He chose to serve in the Navy.

"Most blacks were in the steward's mate branch of the Navy," he said.

This now-obsolete job meant doing mess service and cleaning quarters. McBride had higher hopes. During his training, he excelled and ended up leading a squad.

"We were sent to Idaho with a group of black sailors," he said. "Our company outdid all the other companies there in six months. We could drill, march "

Outdoing expectations became his challenge to himself.

"(The Navy) was one of the most segregated outfits in the U.S. Armed Forces," he said. "It was segregated until we got in a fight with the Japanese We were treated as second-class citizens, but we fought as first-class citizens."

McBride ended up on an amphibious assault vessel that travelled all over the Pacific Ocean. He rose through the ranks and eventually became a sergeant, winning the respect of his fellow officers. One of his most harrowing moments came when his ship was moving from the South China Sea towards Manila.

"On recreation day, I was boxing," he said. "Then we got the sign of 'All hands, man your battle stations.' No one would help me take off those gloves."

He ended up rushing towards his station - McBride manned a 5-inch gun in the stern of the ship - with the boxing gloves still on. By the time he arrived, the approaching enemy planes had shot up the gun station below his own, killing the occupant.

He only visited Pearl Harbor once during the war, toward its end.

"They sent us in groups to visit the sunken ships," he said.

McBride decided to visit the Arizona.

"Oil was still coming out of it," he said. "They wouldn't let us down to the lower deck, because there were some 400 men still down there Those bodies are still there today."

After the war, McBride came home to Fulton.

"I wanted to take my girlfriend, who later became my wife, to a movie," he said. "For a black person to go into the theater, he had to pick up the ticket and then go around into the alley and enter through the black door."

After having spent years in the service of America, McBride just couldn't bring himself to do it.

"We got our tickets, went down the stairs and sat right in the middle," he said.

Immediately he began worrying - he didn't want to get his girlfriend into trouble. Then the theater's manager, Monroe Glenn, approached.

"He came in, looked at me and said, 'Hi, Jack, how are you doing?'" McBride recounted.

In a sense, McBride feels that at least one good thing came out of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Pearl Harbor is something I'll never forget," he said. "The Navy is also something I'll never forget. It led to the armed forces desegregating us. We're here in the armed forces to fight and as long as we're fighting together there's no problem."