Page 100 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2025 - Online Magazine

Edited for Lubbock Senior Link by Jane Bromley

Ed. Note: This story is a summary of an interview with Jim Mason for the University of North Texas Oral History
Program. The interview by James Sanchez took place on September 28, 1996, in Slaton, Texas.

im Mason was born in Post in “Everybody was out on weekend
J1919 and graduated from Post liberty. …radar was new in those
High School. He was working at days, and some guy was just
a dry goods store when a friend fiddling with it when he saw all
suggested they enlist. “I joined these specks starting to appear.
the Navy in December 1939, and He went and told an officer about
my friend became a Marine. He the blips on the radar screen that
was taken prisoner in the Bataan looked like airplanes. The officer
Death March and was a prisoner said, "We got some planes coming
all during the war. After being in from the states; it's probably
liberated, well, he didn't live too them. No alarm was sounded. We
long.” were well prepared, but we weren't
ready.”
Jim went to boot camp in
San Diego and was selected Nobody was expecting a war
for Hospital Corps School. “I with Japan. We were at war with
memorized more than I ever Germany. “I don't remember any
memorized in my life: all the tables speculation about Japan.”
of weights and measures, all the
bones of the body, the circulatory Saturday night 06 Dec 41: “…It
system, the nerves... I just couldn't was real lenient. We could wear
believe all the stuff you had to civilian clothes; we could stay out
memorize… in ten weeks.” all night and do about anything we
wanted. I had a friend who worked
He was sent to the naval hospital nights in the (hospital) boiler room,
at Pearl Harbor, HI for more and I always went over there when
training. For two years, 1940 and I didn't go on liberty. When I came
1941, Jim worked at the hospital, back to the base (in the morning),
took classes, and enjoyed liberty at is when it started. A Marine
Waikiki Beach. When the US Navy stopped me and said, ‘We're being
moved its fleet to Pearl Harbor, attacked! Park your car outside!’
“anywhere you went there was I started walking the two miles
long lines. At the restrooms, or to toward the hospital, and I saw
catch a bus or taxi or anything else, a guy fall down. The (Japanese)
there was long lines, because there planes was coming down real low.
were so many military people A bunch of us ran to him, but he
there.” was dead. …I ran that two miles
wide-open to the hospital, and the
On the night of 06 DEC 41, ...

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