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CNN Saturday Morning News

Football Fans Become Part of Pearl Harbor History

Aired December 08, 2001 - 09:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Sixty years ago, Oregon's Wilamette University football team boarded a cruise ship for a game against the University of Hawaii, and the rest, as they say, is a chapter in Pearl Harbor history.

Randy Nevis (ph) of CNN's Portland affiliate, KGW, with our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEN JACOBSON, FORMER BEARCAT FOOTBALL PLAYER: I remember walking around the deck there, just turned 19.

RANDY NEVIS, REPORTER, KGW, PORTLAND (voice-over): There they were, departing on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to paradise. Sixty years have not faded the memory of all that excitement.

SHIRLEY HADLEY, FORMER BEARCAT FAN: I think we all were, don't you, Ken?

JACOBSON: We were what?

HADLEY: We were excited to be there.

JACOBSON: Oh, yes. Boy, I tell you, my eyes were that big around. I'd never seen anything like that in my life.

NEVIS: Ken Jacobson (ph)...

EARL HAMPTON, FORMER BEARCAT FOOTBALL PLAYER: I was 21.

NEVIS: ... Earl Hampton (ph), 16, Marv Goodman (ph)...

MARV GOODMAN, FORMER BEARCAT FOOTBALL PLAYER: I'm sure I was 18.

NEVIS: ... and Shirley Hadley (ph)...

HADLEY: I was 18.

NEVIS: ... all among the Wilamette University players and fans on a cruise ship to Honolulu in 1941. The Bearcats were eager to face the heavily favored University of Hawaii football team.

JACOBSON: It was a good game. NEVIS: On December 6, the team lost by two touchdowns.

HAMPTON: You've got to give Hawaii credit. They had a good football team.

NEVIS: On December 7, the players gathered outside the hotel for a picnic.

HAMPTON: I heard a big explosion.

JACOBSON: And we go out on the beach there and look, and we could see antiaircraft fire around these planes.

NEVIS: The attack on Pearl Harbor had just begun.

HAMPTON: I just couldn't believe that Japan would even think about attacking us.

JACOBSON: We didn't expect that at all.

NEVIS: The military handed each football player a bayonet.

GOODMAN: I didn't have an idea how to fire it.

HADLEY: Some of them didn't know which end of the gun to load.

CHUCK FURNOW, FORMER BEARCAT FOOTBALL PLAYER: Those things, you could probably throw them better than you could fire them.

NEVIS: Chuck Furnow (ph) of Vancouver remembers guarding a school filled with mysterious boxes, he and his teammates ready to defend against a nighttime beach attack.

FURNOW: At night we'd be out on guard duty, and we'd hear all these noises.

JACOBSON: And it's scary, and the big moon up there.

FURNOW: Every time a coconut flew, somebody'd fire a gun.

HAMPTON: That was probably the longest night of my life.

NEVIS: It wasn't until they boarded a ship home, a ship full of wounded sailors, that reality hit.

FURNOW: The poor kids that were burned severely, and we tried to help them. We tried to encourage them, we tried to write letters for them, and...

JACOBSON: That's when you really kind of, I think, grew up a little bit on that ship, don't you think?

NEVIS: They returned to campus on Christmas Day, 1941, 1,000 worried friends and family waiting.

Each year since, they look at these pictures and think of each other on the day they all became adults.

HAMPTON: Oh, well, yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That report from Randy Nevis of CNN's Portland affiliate, KGW. Good job, Randy.

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