Pearl Harbor survivor: 'Few of us left' to tell story

Richard Thill, 86, steps in front of a mirror in the living room of his St. Paul home. He stretches open a trim white Navy cap and places it on his head. It still fits -- mostly.

This cap, more than 70 years old, was all Thill desired as a boy. He got much more. "Better watch what you wish for," he said Saturday with an easy laugh, surrounded by family and seated in the festively decorated living room of his St. Paul home.

A few months before his 17th birthday, Thill's father fudged his son's age and enlisted him in the U.S. Naval Reserves. Five months later, in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared a national emergency and Thill, a junior at Humboldt High School, was called to active duty on a gun crew aboard the USS Ward, a recommissioned World War I destroyer.

To the Minnesota boy's delight, he was sent to balmy Oahu, in what was then the territory of Hawaii. The station: Pearl Harbor.

"It was exciting," he said. "It was an adventure. Pearl Harbor was a dream come true."

Born in 1923, Thill grew up in a German-immigrant neighborhood on St. Paul's West Side. Life was simple. No one had much. His father worked for NSP for 30 years. His mother, "the centerpiece of the family," dressed Thill in sailor suits and took him on occasional streetcar rides to shop in downtown dime stores.

"It was a big treat," Thill remembered. "As a teenager in the 1930s, you didn't get out of the neighborhood."

At around 4 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, a minesweeper spotted a periscope heading toward Pearl Harbor. At 6:20 a.m., Thill remembers seeing the conning tower of a submarine jutting out of the water. "It had no markings, no numbers or letters," Thill said. "We had no idea who it was."

The USS Ward fired, sinking it. Those shots would be the first two shots fired by the United States.

Roughly an hour later, chaos.

Japanese fighter planes, torpedoes and dive bombers formally attacked. "It was a perfect day for the Japanese to attack, because so few people were on board their stations or on ship," Thill said.

Initial reports of the attack were met with disbelief. "The Army thought the Navy was fooling around and the Navy thought the Army was fooling around," he said. "Then the bombs started and a cloud of black smoke went across the horizon." Shrapnel rained down.

Around 11 a.m., he understood the full impact of the catastrophe. "We went into the harbor," he said. "We could see all the smoke. We were speechless. This was ... really serious."

One of the most haunting memories was of the USS Oklahoma battleship, "almost all the way upside-down. For two weeks, you could hear the men inside pounding, but the rescuers couldn't get them out. It was terrible. No food. No water. Two weeks."

He stops, breaks down.

Thill pushes himself, graciously, to continue because he knows there are few left who can. He is president of the Twin Cities Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, which now has about 17 active members. He's the youngest. Statewide membership has dwindled from nearly 500 to a mere handful of survivors.

Thill will join some of them at a Pearl Harbor remembrance day event at 11 a.m., Sunday at the Fort Snelling chapel. On Monday at 10 a.m., the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and the Fort Snelling National Cemetery Memorial Rifle Squad will host a ceremony in their honor at the Veterans Service Building, fifth floor, 20 W. 12th St., in St. Paul.

He met his wife, Gloria, through her aunt in a Navy yard in Philadelphia. "Like all the girls, she was looking for a sailor," said Thill, sharply dressed in a crisp blue shirt and gray slacks, his blue eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses.

Gloria laughs. "When I came home with him, my mother said, 'You let that sailor put his arm around your waist?'" They've been married for 62 years.

Their son, Richard Jr., lives near Dallas, but flew up to be with his dad for the Pearl Harbor events, as did Thill's grandson, Rick, 36, from Florida. They also have a daughter, Theresa; four other grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

More than 60 years after prematurely leaving high school, Thill was honored recently with his high school degree from Humboldt.

"Dad always gets a bit of attention this time of the year," said son Richard Jr.

"If I don't talk about it, I'm all right," Thill said. "Sometimes, when I start to talk about it. ... But there are so few of us left now."