Dec. 7—Vina Mikkelsen’s son took the white and pink lei his 93-year-old mother wore around her neck and hung it on a wreath that had a black band around it with gold words: “NEVER FORGET.”
About 30 other attendees followed suit on a cold, rainy Saturday outside the Arena, laying colorful leis on the green wreath to honor and remember the 2,403 Americans who lost their lives 83 years ago in a Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that launched the U.S. into World War II.
The Pearl Harbor ceremony is nothing new for Mikkelsen, a Spokane resident.
She helped organize the gathering in past years to remember the attack and the people like her late husband, who witnessed the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
“It’s very important to me,” Mikkelsen said.
Mikkelsen’s husband, Denis Mikkelsen, was a Navy radioman on the USS West Virginia.
On Dec. 7, the 19-year-old Mikkelsen awoke to shouts and sirens aboard his battleship, which later sank from torpedo damage.
He tried to seal portholes in the ship, but with water rising deeper, he was ordered to abandon ship and swam to shore. He and other sailors were then ordered back to try to save the West Virginia by putting out fires.
“There was smoke everywhere,” he told The Spokesman-Review in 2007. “We didn’t have the proper gear. They gave gas masks instead of breathing apparatus.”
Mikkelsen was a member of Spokane’s Pearl Harbor Survivors Association before he died in 2013 at the age of 90.
“He passed away a decade ago, but his ship’s heroism is textbook of why America came back from that surprise attack,” said Brian Newberry, former commander at Fairchild Air Force Base and CEO of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.
Newberry told the small crowd Saturday that as the West Virginia started to capsize, the crew “counterflooded” the other side of the ship, allowing it to rest upright on the seafloor. The sailors’ actions saved lives while also leading to a large salvage operation that allowed the ship to participate in the Pacific theater of the war.
“Vina, Denis’ ship represented the true grit of America that took a punch, but came back to stand tall,” Newberry told Vina Mikkelsen and attendees.
Newberry read the names of the members of the Spokane chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, all of whom have died, including most recently Ray Garland, a Marine, who died in 2019 at age 96.
“Today, the Pearl Harbor attack is distant to most Americans,” Newberry said. “In fact, only 16 survivors that we know of are still alive in America today.”
Newberry said most of the survivors are older than 100 , and two of them attended ceremonies Saturday morning in Oahu, Hawaii.
Attendees, several with umbrellas over their heads, held a moment of silence at the Pearl Harbor memorial outside the Arena. The Fairchild honor guard held the colors and a bugler played “Taps” before Vina Mikkelsen started the lei hanging on the wreath.
Vina Mikkelsen wore a red coat which had a “Remember Pearl Harbor” pin on it. The word, “Pearl,” was replaced by an actual pearl jewel.
Bob Snider, who also routinely attends the Pearl Harbor ceremonies, witnessed the attack as an 8-year-old boy.
Snider, 91, chuckled when asked why he attended Saturday’s ceremony.
“If you experience that day, you would come out,” he said.
Snider said he recalled black smoke filling the skies the morning of Dec. 7.
“You can’t imagine how scary those times were,” he said.
His father, Stanley Snider, worked as a mechanic at Hickam Field, an army airfield and bomber base which the Japanese also bombed to prevent a counterattack.
Bob Snider previously told The Spokesman-Review his father barely missed the attack as he rushed to work that morning.
His father told him and his mother to hide under piled up mattresses in the family home, and not to come out until it was quiet.
He said Saturday that he and his mother tried to eat lunch after the attack, but they couldn’t.
“While we were hugging each other, we were both wondering what’s happening to father,” Bob Snider said.
In a 1946 letter, Col. Leland Hurd, commanding officer of the Hawaiian Air Depot at the time of the attack, recognized Stanley Snider for his services to the depot and the war effort that were “far beyond the call of duty.”
The U.S. Army Air Forces awarded Snider with the “Commendation for Meritorious Civilian Service” for his “outstanding services” in Hawaii and Spokane.
“He displayed exceptional courage on 7 December during the bombing of Hickam Field; he fought the fires, aided the injured and moved valuable equipment thereby saving aircraft and accessories which would otherwise have been lost to the Government at a time when it was so urgently needed,” Hurd wrote.
Because of Stanley Snider’s “ability and courage” during the bombing at Hickam Field, Hurd wrote that he requested Snider’s transfer from Hawaii to the Spokane Army Air Depot, now called Fairchild Air Force Base, to help Hurd in establishing that organization when Hurd was transferred to Spokane.
