State senator recalls his narrow escape from Dec. 7 terror

Friday, Dec. 7, 2001 | 8:46 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Sixty years ago Lawrence Jacobsen sat in the back seat of a Navy scout plane on the runway at Pearl Harbor's Ford Island, waiting for the engine to warm up.

Then, seemingly from nowhere, a wave of Japanese planes broke the Sunday morning peace, storming over the airfield.

"One moment it was paradise, and the next moment it was a complete disaster," said Jacobsen, who was a 17-year-old Navy airman at the time.

"I'm no hero, and there was a time or two I thought I was not coming back."

Jacobsen, a state senator from Gardnerville and senior member of the Legislature, went on to fight in 15 other battles in the Pacific, surviving the sinking of a ship and a plane crash into the ocean.

On Dec. 6, the day before the attack, Jacobsen had been on a reconnaissance mission, but the flight covered territory away from the location of the Japanese ships that were about 230 miles from Hawaii.

The next day, that infamous Sunday morning in 1941, Jacobsen was waiting for another mission when the attack started.

"All of a sudden everything started to explode around us," he remembered. "I thought it was a drill."

Two of the four planes in his unit blew up, and three of the eight crew members were killed.

Jacobsen, not knowing who was attacking, jumped out of the scout observation biplane and ran for a nearby hangar to avoid the strafing. He pressed against a cement wall, but a bomb hit the hangar. Fire broke out, and Jacobsen feared the flames would touch off the gasoline in the planes.

He fled the hangar and hid beneath some boats near the shoreline until the attack was over.

"There was so much confusion," he said. "Dead bodies were floating everywhere. Everybody was a sitting duck.

"We shot down some of our own planes because there was so much confusion. They (American servicemen) were a bunch of maniacs shooting at everything."

After the attack, the Navy issued Jacobsen a .38 caliber pistol, but he never fired a shot that day. People feared a Japanese invasion that never came.

In the aftermath, crews salvaged parts from two of the badly damaged aircraft and repairs were made on the other two. Jacobsen flew out of Hawaii on Dec. 8 to rendezvous with the cruiser Astoria, where the planes were based.

These were small aircraft catapulted off the cruiser for scouting missions. Top speed was about 40 mph, he said. They would land in the water and be hoisted back aboard the cruiser.

The cruiser, nicknamed the "Nasty Asti," returned to Hawaii on Dec. 13. Jacobsen said there were still bodies in the water. The return trip gave him a chance to call his mother and tell her he was safe.

His mother had opposed his entry into the military. Jacobsen, at age 16, lied about his age and enlisted in 1939 because he was "tired of milking the cows and feeding the pigs" at their ranch in Douglas County.

During his service, Jacobsen saw some of the biggest battles in the Pacific and even shared a tent with Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent.

At the invasion of Guadalcanal, his cruiser and three others were hit and sunk. Jacobsen abandoned ship, hanging onto floating wreckage and worrying about potential shark attacks. He floated in the Pacific for six hours before being picked up.

He was one of only 400 survivors from a crew of 1,400.

"Everybody on the top deck survived, but those below deck were SOL," he said.

Jacobsen was sent back to the San Francisco Bay area and trained in airplane repair. He became a crewman on dive-bombers and torpedo planes and was sent back to the Pacific where one plane he was on had to ditch in the Pacific because of damage.

He was never wounded, but he "lost a lot of friends who were like family."

"I wasn't any hero. I was lucky to go in in one piece and come out in one piece."

From his war experience he has become a champion for military veterans in Nevada. He has been instrumental in getting the first veterans cemeteries in Boulder City and Fernley and the nursing home now under construction in Boulder City.

He also said the war made him more religious.

"Prayer," he said, "comes easier when you're afraid."