Fri, Nov 27 2009
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Published December 08, 2008 09:08 pm - RIVERTON, Kan. — Riverton students on Monday remembered the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and recognized area veterans of World War II. Riverton students hear firsthand account of Pearl Harbor attack By Roger McKinney rmckinney@joplinglobe.com RIVERTON, Kan. — Riverton students on Monday remembered the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and recognized area veterans of World War II. One honored guest at the ceremony, 90-year-old Byron Lengquist, had a firsthand perspective. He witnessed the attack on Hickam Field by Japanese planes that preceded the harbor bombing. Lengquist, of Riverton, said he watched as the first bomb fell on the Hickam Field barracks, killing 32. He said a second bomb struck a hangar. Then the first bomb to fall on the harbor was dropped. “From then on, it was just chaos,” Lengquist told the students. “There was planes everywhere.” He said in an interview before the event that he had started for downtown Honolulu to perform duties he had been assigned when the attack began. Lengquist, a flight engineer in the Army Air Corps, said that when the bombs started to explode, he decided he was needed back at the airfield. He told the students that when he returned, he found there was little he could do, so he found an open manhole. “I crawled in there while the lead was flying,” Lengquist said. He saw action the following year, when he participated in bombing missions against Japanese forces at Guadalcanal, where fighting began on Aug. 7, 1942. Lengquist said before the event that people always refer to World War II veterans as heroes. “I don’t feel that way,” he said. “It’s something we had to do.” He said his brother, Philip Lengquist, died after a bombing mission in the Marshall Islands. Lengquist said it is nice that students continue to learn about and remember the Pearl Harbor attack. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Jim Aubuchon also spoke to the middle-school and high-school students. 
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