Pearl Harbor Vet’s Final Return
For the last 30 years of his life, Al Bodenlos visited dozens of San Diego schools and community groups to share stories about the horrors he witnessed 73 years ago today, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and pushed the United States into World War II.
He was a 21-year-old Army combat engineer at Schofield Barracks, close enough to Battleship Row to be knocked off his feet when the USS Arizona blew up, close enough to see the faces of the Japanese pilots strafing him with their machine guns.
It was a day that shaped him, as it did so many others, as it did a nation, and in time Bodenlos found himself drawn back to Pearl Harbor. Twice a year for more than a decade he flew to Hawaii to pay his respects to the fallen by volunteering at the USS Arizona memorial.
So when Bodenlos died last month at age 94, it didnt surprise his friends to learn that hed made a special request for the disposition of his ashes: Take them to Pearl Harbor and scatter them in the water.
When that happens, in early January, Bodenlos will join a small but growing group of veterans who have chosen that as their final resting place.
They want to come back here to be reunited with the brothers they lost on Dec. 7, said Jim Taylor, a retired Navy master chief who coordinates the memorial services for the Pearl Harbor survivors.
Each year brings requests for permits for about 25 to 30 such send-offs, a number thats been increasing as the Greatest Generation dies, Taylor said. (Of the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II, about 1 million are alive.)
The dwindling population of Pearl Harbor survivors, down to about 2,000 nationwide, is one of the reasons Bodenlos dedicated himself to talking about the Japanese attack and the ensuing war with anyone who would listen, according to his friends.
Al wanted to be a voice for those who no longer had a voice, said Navy Capt. Steve Shepard, who once brought Bodenlos to Washington, D.C. to speak to intelligence officers. He felt he was honoring them by telling their story, and by telling their story doing what he could to make sure we would not forget.
BUGLE MASTER
Bodenlos was born in 1920 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up dreaming of a life playing and teaching music. But the Depression made jobs scarce, and one month before his 20th birthday he joined the Army.
He was assigned to the 804th Engineer Aviation Battalion, which specialized in building and fixing airplane runways, and sent to Schofield Barracks. He was bugle master for the battalions drum and bugle corps. On Dec. 6, 1941, he went to Honolulu to buy instruments and to attend a military-band concert.
Early the next morning, returning to Schofield, he saw planes over Pearl Harbor and smoke rising from the battleships. He marveled at the realism of what he assumed was a U.S. Naval exercise. He soon learned otherwise.
He saw the Arizona get blown up and watched the USS Oklahoma roll over. Japanese planes dove at Schofield, sending him and the other soldiers scrambling into ditches and behind buildings.
The surprise attack came in two waves, about 350 planes in all, launched from aircraft carriers. When it was over, about 2,400 U.S. sailors, soldiers, Marines and civilians had been killed and another 1,200 wounded. More than 20 ships were sunk or damaged, and more than 320 planes destroyed or damaged.
For two days, Bodenlos went without sleep, working as a motorcycle courier ferrying information between military commanders worried about a follow-up Japanese land invasion that never came.
After the U.S. declared war, Bodenlos spent the next 3 years with his battalion island-hopping through the Pacific Theater, working on airfields. He was back in the states on leave when the atomic bombs forced Japan to surrender. Two years later, in 1947, he left the Army.
He came to San Diego and worked for more than 30 years in highway construction. After he retired, he heard about the local branch of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and began going to meetings.
Part of the associations motto is Remember Pearl Harbor, and Bodenlos embraced that, visiting schools and community organizations to give presentations. He volunteered at the VA Hospital and aboard the USS Midway, usually clad in the uniform of the Survivors Association: white pants, white shoes, white beret, white jacket, colorful Hawaiian shirt.
He wanted people, especially the younger generations, to know the things hed seen, to understand that it isnt all about iPhones and YouTube, said David Adkins, a longtime friend in Hawaii. He wanted to let people know there were real-world events that have given them their freedom.
WERE ALL TREASURES
Bodenlos made friends wherever he went.
We used to do parades together, said Stu Hedley, another local Pearl Harbor survivor, and Al always wanted to jump out of the car to go shake hands, and then jump back in.
Bodenlos liked to tell jokes about himself. A favorite was the time he was supposed to blow Reveille on his bugle to wake the troops at 6:30 a.m. and he got mixed up in the dark and played three hours early.
That made him briefly unpopular, but it didnt hurt his love of music. In later years, if he came across a band playing, he would inevitably figure out a way to get the conductor to hand over the baton for a song or two.
It happened on the USS Midway during a battle of college bands in town for the Poinsettia Bowl one year. It happened in Hawaii at the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. It happened outside the Lincoln Memorial two years ago with Honor Flight San Diego, a nonprofit that flies World War II vets to Washington D.C. to see the monuments.
This guy touched so many people, said Gary Roehm, an Honor Flight volunteer. Hes got all these little extended families all over the place. He remembered Bodenlos telling the other veterans on the Honor Flight trip, Were all treasures.
As far as his friends know, Bodenlos never married, never had children. He has nieces and nephews who live out of state. Hedley is organizing a memorial service for him in San Diego on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Veterans Museum in Balboa Park.
Early next year, Roehm will carry Bodenlos ashes to Hawaii for the farewell at Pearl Harbor, scheduled for Jan. 6. Taylor, the coordinator there, said the service will include military honors a three-volley rifle salute, Taps, a folded flag from a grateful nation and then the ashes will be scattered in the water near the wreckage of the USS Utah.
Those who knew him said its the perfect place.
I think for him, his time in the military, especially Pearl Harbor, was a defining moment, and it became his mission to tell that story, said Shepard, the Navy captain. Scattering his ashes there best symbolizes the conclusion of the mission: Ive done everything I could, and now Ive come to rest in the waters that started this journey.
Tags: Veterans News
