Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremony planned for Wednesday

On National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Wednesday, Dec. 7, Owego and Tioga County will honor the memory of its first WWII casualty who is among the 1,117 gallant sailors and marines entombed, along with their shipmates, and who gave their lives in action on the USS Arizona. Also remembered are four Tioga County servicemen now deceased, and who were on the island and survived.  

On “A Day Which Will Live in Infamy”, American flags will fly at half-staff over Owego’s Tioga County Veterans WWII Memorial and the Tioga County Civil War Union Memorial.  

On “A Day That Will Live in Infamy”, American flags will fly at half-staff over Owego’s Tioga County Veterans WWII Memorial and the Tioga County Civil War Union Memorial.  

Pearl Harbor families, the public, Gold Star Families, Purple Heart and Valor Honor Recipients, and veterans from all wars are invited to attend a brief special remembrance ceremony for the Pearl Harbor heroes and deceased survivors at 12:55 p.m., the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, on Wednesday, Dec. 7 inside the Glenn A. Warner Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1371, and downstairs in the Delmar Dale Sibley Memorial Hall. 

Five Tioga County servicemen were stationed at Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning. One made the supreme sacrifice and is still aboard the USS Arizona. Four became Pearl Harbor Survivors, and after other South Pacific combat eventually returned home. All four are now deceased. 

It was almost 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941. The skies above Pearl Harbor were clear and bright blue. Eyes saw a torpedo that had just been released from a Japanese plane hit the Naval Battleship USS Arizona. A kamikaze pilot continued on to the Hickam Army Airfield about 1,200 feet way, crashing his bomber into a group of still-grounded American planes. 

It’s been 81 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which in less than two hours claimed the lives of 2,500 men and women, about half on the USS Arizona, and wounded another 1,000. About 300 American airplanes and 18 ships were damaged or destroyed in the surprise assault, prompting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to label Dec. 7, 1941 as the “…. date which will live in infamy.” The event single-handedly catapulted America into World War II. 

Tioga County’s first WWII casualty was Seaman First Class Delmar Dale Sibley of Owego, killed in action aboard the Battleship USS Arizona at age 23, and 23 days before his 24th birthday. 

Word of Delmar’s status came by telegram on Dec. 22, 1941, from the Navy Department, that the nephew of Owego Police Chief Earl Sibley was missing following the sneak attack on the first line battleship that was sunk. 

Seaman Sibley is memorialized at Courts of the Missing, Court 2 Honolulu Memorial National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. This is an American Battle Monuments Commission location.

Delmar was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Sibley, and was born in South Dakota. He made his home for five years with his uncle and aunt, Chief Earl and wife Lucy Sibley, on Main Street.  He worked for Endicott Johnson and was well and favorably known to a large number of Owegoans.  

In the Glenn A. Warner Post 1371 Veterans of Foreign Wars, the basement hall is named in his honor; the Delmar Dale Sibley Memorial Dining Room. It was dedicated on Friday, Dec. 7, 2007. The September 2011 flood severely damaged the dining area. Sibley’s wall portrait was found floating on the floodwater. 

His shadow box of medals has been restored with these commendations: Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, World War II Victory Medal, Navy Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Good Conduct Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and Navy Expeditionary Medal. 

Of the 84,000 who survived the brutal assault, less than 2,000, are still here today to tell their stories first hand. 

Army Air Corps’ Charles “Bill” Kennedy of Owego, 96 at the time of his death on February 26, 2018, was at Hickman Field when a flight of some 50 dive-bombers and fighters struck where A-20, B-18 and B-17 were parked wingtip to wingtip. Kennedy was with an Air Force squadron of about 240 people. 

“We lost ten men and about 32 were wounded, lost all our airplanes and our barracks were pretty well shot up,” Kennedy said. 

Lester Dunham of Owego was one of the first from Tioga County to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1939. At the time of the attack he was on guard duty patrolling the docks from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. at Pearl Harbor. He had just returned from breakfast when the bombing started. He was only 200 yards away from the ships being sunk. He helped pull men out of the water – some alive, some dead.  

The combat Marine, a machine gun crewman, fought five battles – Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Iwo Jima. 

Daughter Patty Sherwood recalls, “Buster was born Aug. 8, 1920. He attended Newark Valley High School and dropped out of school to join the Marine Corps in 1939. He did all of his fighting in the Pacific.” 

After the attack on Pearl Harbor he was shipped to Midway. From Midway he went back to Pearl Harbor, to Guadalcanal, and then to New Zealand for six months. He then came back to the states. From there he went back to Iwo Jima. He was a forward observer for the artillery. 

After Iwo Jima they loaded up to invade Japan when they got word that we dropped the Atomic Bomb. But they still went to Japan to occupy Japan. Six months later he came back to Pearl Harbor and was released. He spent from 1941 to 1946 in the Pacific War, and only came home once. 

He contacted Malaria while he was fighting and lost a lot of weight from it. He was never shot, but did get a piece of steel in him. In the Guadalcanal campaign with comrades in his 1st Marine Division he escaped from a foxhole, just before it blew up.  

Lester “Buster” Dunham married in 1946. He was the father of five children – Patty Sherwood, Ronnie Dunham, Kathy Dunham, Cheri Porcari, and Lee Dunham. He worked for IBM Endicott in Facilities Maintenance and Tioga County Gas and Appliance in Owego. After retiring he was a guard at the Tioga County Jail, worked at Berry’s Liquor Store, was a volunteer Owego Fire Department firefighter, and drove for the Owego Emergency Squad.   

Buster retired from IBM after 28 years. He died Sunday, May 29, 2005, and is buried in Tioga Cemetery. Buster Dunham was a proud Marine. His family will  always be very proud of him.

Army Tech Sergeant Donald Stocks of Owego was also at Hickam Field. He was a cook on the day of the attack. He left the kitchen and grabbed a rifle to fight. Back home he did not talk about that day. Stocks was the husband of Lillian Barnes Stocks, and the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Stocks. He died on Feb. 3, 1999, at the age 79.

Army Sergeant Richard Hopkins of Berkshire enlisted on April 2, 1940 and arrived in Honolulu on June 17, 1940. He was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks at the time of the attack. 

Hopkins remembers the planes coming in and bombs dropping. It’s something you do not forget. He recalls looking out of his barracks. “They were hauling wounded on cars and trucks, anything they could get them on to rush them to the hospital.” 

Hopkins’ daughter, Patricia Dunham Woodward of Owego, says she has a copy of her father’s diary he wrote about the tragic day and the aftermath that followed. “He kept most of it inside but did tell us that that morning he was just getting off guard duty headed to breakfast, never making it to breakfast when everything started. He did say that he had to pull a lot of his buddies and guys out of the Ocean and he said it’s something you would never want to see.”

Hopkins also spent four months on the front lines at Guadalcanal in charge of two machine gun squads against the Japanese, who “would not surrender.” He vividly remembers a Japanese bullet whizzing by his head. 

Hopkins is the recipient of the Bronze Star Medal, the nation’s fourth highest award, for his meritorious service in a combat zone. 

Wednesday’s tribute ceremony is to keep alive the memory of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, and to honor the heroism and sacrifice of the American military at Oahu, Hawaii that fateful day. 

Veterans hope a few will take time out of their busy schedules to remember this important event. It will be a stark reminder of the hefty price of war, and of the kind of courage that has kept our country the home of the free and the land of the brave. 

Were there others from Tioga County at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941? Email what you know to Glenn A. Warner Post 1371 Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Chairman Jim Raftis to jraftis2@stny.rr.com.

A related story involves an Owego mother and a Japanese Internment Camp; Gordon Ichikawa’s mom, the late 98-year-old Kiyo Ichiawa, who died on Jan. 25, 2016. She was born in Hood River, Oregon, the eldest of five children. Family members were fruit farmers. She graduated from Walla Walla College. 

Kiyo was sent with her mother, father and brother with other Japanese Americans for three years to concentration camps in Pinedale and Tule Lake California, and Minidoka, Idaho. 

Her husband Thomas, who graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, predeceased Kiyo in death. 

Tommy served in WWII in the U.S. Army as Battalion Combat Radio Sergeant in the 44th Regiment Combat Team, consisting of Japanese Americans called Nisei. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Tommy is past Commander of Post 1371 Veterans of Foreign Wars. He founded T & K Communications in 1963, and operated it with his son Gordon from 1980, and until the time of his death at age 89 on May 6, 2004.