Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day - 2019

Whit Criswell Bryan
1920-2001

I read today that today there are only three living survivors of Pearl Harbor. There are no living survivors in my part of Virginia where local survivors' names are engraved on a monument at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.

The Pearl Harbor memorial was built and dedicated in 1990 on the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.  An expansion to the monument was completed in 2001 which includes 184  names of known local survivors of the attack.

Names were added to the monument
just a few months after my father's
death in 2001.

My father, Whit Criswell Bryan, was a survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack. Dad was stationed at the Mobile Naval Hospital #2 as a Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class. He was one of many Naval personnel constructing the hospital and it was not complete when the bombing occurred. He didn't talk about his specific duties after the bombing so I did some searching to find out more. 

According to U.S. Navy Medicine, The Mobile Naval Hospital was not yet uncrated but provided personnel, supplies, and equipment to treat 110 patients on the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked. 

Hospital Corps Quarterly, Volumes 15-16 has a list of all officers and enlisted men stationed at the Mobile Naval Hospital on December 7, 1941.

Bernard Williams, a Pharmacist's Mate at the mobile hospital, stated that after the attack they began the task of cleaning up the debris and worked well into the night. 

LeRoy Knurr, a Navy carpenter, said his unit was quickly put to work building medical facilities for casualties. It was written that as soon as an area was finished, beds would be brought in and it would soon be filled by wounded. Edward C. Kenny stated they worked frantically to finish the mobile hospital to accommodate 400 burn victims. 

George Gorohoff's obituary stated that he was personally responsible for making over 3,000 battle dressings following the attack while working in a cane field. The mobile hospital was surrounded by cane fields. 

Robert Brunner and others from the mobile hospital crowded into trucks and hustled to the harbor. The most severely burned victims were taken to the naval hospital. More than 100 were treated in the still-unfinished mobile unit.

left - Whit Bryan and Robert "Bob" Brunner - Pearl Harbor - about 1941
right - Robert "Bob" Brunner and Whit Bryan - Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story - December 7, 1991

Visit these links to learn more about Dad's time in Pearl Harbor. 

• Friday's Photo: Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day 2012


Thoughts of Dad on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day 2014
Remembering Dad and Pearl Harbor: Naval Mobile Hospital # 2
Friday's Photo: Pearl Harbor 
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day - Dad was stationed at the Mobile Naval Hospital #2 in Aiea Heights, Territory of Hawaii
#52ancestors Post Fifty-One: The Second Anniversary of Mobile Hospital No. 2, Pearl Harbor - August 1943 
Friday's Photo: Pearl Harbor Survivors, Whit Bryan and Bob Brunner - 1991

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Diana

© 2019

Other Sources

Family photographs and documents from the collection Diana Bryan Quinn. 

“JEB Little Creek-Fort Story honors Pearl Harbor survivors and victims at annual remembrance ceremony .” 13newsnow.com, https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/national/military-news/jeb-little-creek-fort-story-honors-pearl-harbor-survivors-and-victims-at-annual-remembrance-ceremony/291-d6ce17a8-ef1c-4274-815f-017330c444d4. Accessed 7 Dec. 2019.

Napa Valley Register (California) 9 February 2001, obit for George Gorohoff, GenealogyBank.com https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/obituaries/obit/13C7C709F1A0A2B8-13C7C709F1A0A2B8 : accessed 7 December 2019