The Japanese Attack On Pearl Harbor
Two young men from Clinton, Belden Besse and Clair Simonson, enlisted in the Army Air Corp on September 17th, 1940. They boarded a train bound for Fort Slocum, New York.
Belden Besse was 21 years old when he enlisted. Born in Clinton, his dad, Floyd, was half owner of the Besse Brothers Tannery and died when Belden was only 2 years old. Belden lived next to the library with his widowed mother Charline (Abbott) Besse, and his 15 year old brother Voyle. Belden had graduated from Bridgton Academy in Bridgton, Maine.
Clair Simonson was just 19 years old at the time of his enlistment. He was born in Bridgewater, Maine and moved to Clinton when he was very young. Clair graduated from Clinton High School, class of 1939. He lived with his parents Ralph and Hazel (Lewis) Simonson in the last farmhouse before the Benton town line on Route 100.
The United States had not been in any international conflicts since before Belden and Clair were born, and joining the Army Air Corp seemed like an opportunity to see the world. After 11 weeks of basic training at Fort Slocum, the two were both sent to Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu with the Army Air Corps. Their dream was coming true; they were right next to Honolulu beach, one of the top tourist destinations in the world, and there was no shortage of girls. On December 7th, 1941, their dream became a nightmare.
Asleep on that Sunday morning, their bunks were next to each other. It was 7:55 a.m. when the planes started coming. They heard the planes, then they heard the bombs, and one guy looked out the window and hollered “This is the real McCoy!” He could see the Rising Sun insignia on the planes, and the sound of the bombs was deafening.
Belden and Clair started running, trying to make it to the ground floor of the barracks and hoping the bombs wouldn’t be able to destroy down there. Looking around, they changed their minds, thinking that it didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, they ran for the parking lot and scrambled under a parked Army truck.
Belden was still with Clair when they reached the Army truck. A piece of shrapnel skipped across the parking lot, hitting Belden in the back as they huddled under the truck, trying to escape an enemy that was tearing up the whole island.
After the first bombing wave, the two headed for the banks along the harbor. They could see sailors jumping from the burning ships into the burning oil – they didn’t have any other place to go.
Most U.S. soldiers didn’t have any guns. All of the guns were locked up in the Armory. The United States Army Air Corp at Pearl Harbor couldn’t get any of their bombers off Hickam field. But some fighters from nearby Wheeler Field went up, and a Marine battalion got some anti-aircraft guns and brought down about 28 planes.
The Japanese returned twice that day, hitting the island three times in all. After the first wave, men were trying to get into the base hospital whether they were wounded or not, but the hospital wasn’t any safer than any other place that day. The men who could still walk drifted into the officers’ quarters and commissary near the harbor. They were there a week or ten days before they started regrouping.
It was two weeks before Belden and Clair could send a telegram home to their parents, telling them they were all right.
Clair Simonson later reminisced, “All I had on was a pair of pants, slippers and a T-shirt... and that is all I had for a week.” Simonson remembered, “Belden and I went to the mess hall, near their barracks, but a bomb had made an almost direct hit there. All we found were remains of more than 400 men, their bodies scattered everywhere we looked.”
The dead were left in the streets and buildings for two or three days before covered Army trucks collected them. There were so many – and no place to put them. In addition, many remains could not be identified.
Four days after the Pearl Harbor attack, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The U.S. had just been dragged into what would become the largest, deadliest war this world has ever known, with over 30 countries involved and resulting in over 40,000,000 deaths.
Italy surrendered September 8th, 1943.
Germany surrendered May 7th, 1945.
Japan surrendered September 2nd, 1945.
While the United States did not start this war, Clair and Belden were determined do their part in ending it.
Clair Simonson
Clair worked in the armament section, handling weapons, until he was admitted to the Air Corps Administration School. After graduation, he worked in operations until he returned to the United States in February, 1943.
After a furlough, Clair rejoined his air crew and was sent to Foggia, Italy with the 15th Air Force. He flew 33 missions as a tail gunner on a B-24 Liberator. Once his plane was shot up so badly that he was forced to land in Yugoslavia. It took a week for the British to repair their plane.
Clair once said that if a man is looking for job security and hopes for a reasonably long life span, he doesn’t sit in the tail gunner’s slot while flying over the Alps to bomb oil wells and railroad centers. Yet, that is exactly what Clair did, hitting places like their biggest target, Munich, and cities in Austria, Yugoslavia, and Poland. He earned a Bronze star for “aerial achievement against the enemy.”
Belden Besse
The Maine member of the Fortress crew, which has been recommended for various awards as a result of distinguished service, was Technical Sergeant Belden A. Besse of Clinton, who was eventually recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross, Silver Star and the Airmen's Medal with the Oak Leaf Cluster.
Eagle-eyed Besse, who himself is credited with accomplishing the downfall of 13 Japanese planes as a "waist gunner," was always lavish in praise of his fellow crew members. "They all knew their business or I'd never got back,” he declared.
Belden was a radio operator and gunner in his Fortress and had a very good vantage point in the gigantic bomber. He operated a waist gun (one of those trip-hammers located in the center of the aircraft). Unlike gunners in other sections of the craft, from his perch he could send bullets spraying in wide arcs and could view terrain below to see the effect of bombs.
He sustained a slight back injury when a bit of shrapnel struck him in the back during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and for which he was awarded the Purple Heart. He was also wounded twice following Pearl Harbor, earning two Purple Heart Clusters.
One injury, later entirely hidden away under a thick crop of wavy blond hair, was a “scratch” that took seven stitches to close after a Zero bullet zipped through Besse's aircraft, and grazed his scalp in Guadalcanal battling. His plane was shot down once and he drifted in an open raft in the Guadalcanal area for four or five days until he was rescued.
He got his first taste of individual victory during a series of four bombing missions in eight days in 1942, on August 1st, 3rd, 7th and 8th. On August 3rd, he downed a Zero on the first occasion of firing a Fortress gun in actual combat. That Zero was the first of the 13 to be shot down by Besse.
No man who survived Pearl Harbor that infamous day, December 7th, 1941 will ever forget. Belden and Clair certainly never did.