For nearly 60 years, El Cajon resident Pat Thompson asked herself the same questions over and over: Where is my dancing sailor? Whatever happened to him? Did he survive Pearl Harbor?
For nearly 60 years, El Cajon resident Pat Thompson asked herself the same questions over and over: Where is my dancing sailor? Whatever happened to him? Did he survive Pearl Harbor?
When she was just 10 years old, Thompson had won a jitterbug dance contest with this man seven years her senior but had no idea of who or where he was. She finally reconnected in the 90s with Jack Evans, who not only had survived Pearl Harbor, but also risen to rank as Captain in the Navy. Several weeks ago, Evans had told the story of his own experiences as a sailor in Pearl Harbor and the years after.
It is a story that captivated the hearts of all who listened at the La Mesa Lions Club meeting.
Last Tuesday, Evans sat next to his wife Nancy listening raptly to Thompson’s side of the story, “the real story,” as she joked. Thompson’s daughter-in-law Cynthia Rogers and grandson Phillip Rogers smiled and nodded as she told her tale.
In 1941, Patsy Campbell was 10 years old, the daughter of a Chief radioman in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor.
“We were one of the first families to move into the new Pearl Harbor Navy housing,” Thompson said. “It was fun living there.”
The pineapple trains would pass in front of their house every day as the men returned from the fields.
“We kids waited at the tracks and asked the workers to throw us some pineapples. They always did,” she said.
At the Bloch Arena on Saturday evenings, the Battle of the Bands drew all the kids into listen to the music and dance.
“I knew how to jitterbug and used to sit or stand on the floor in front of the bands to listen and move to the beat,” Thompson said.
On the night before Pearl Harbor, she was doing just that when a young sailor asked her to dance with him. The two of them danced so well they won the jitterbug contest. They each took a Champion Navy Jitterbug 1941 trophy home that night.
“After the dance, he went his way and I went mine, and neither of us knew the other’s name or anything about each other,” Thompson said.
The next morning, Sunday, December 7, Thompson woke up to the sound of planes flying overhead. She thought the planes were from Hickam Field so she ran outside to wave at them like she always did every time they flew over.
“I did not know they were not our planes. I only knew there were more planes than I had ever seen at one time,” she said.
From a neighbor’s two-story house, they could all see that Hickam Field and Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor were being bombed.
“The planes were flying so low that we could see the pilots,” she said.
When the radio announcer said that Oahu was being attacked and then played the “National Anthem.” Thompson’s mother began to cry.
“I knew if my mother was crying, something bad was going to happen,” she said.
The next morning they all went outside and saw the USS Arizona still in billowing black smoke along with the other ships.
“I will never forget what I saw,” she said.
She and the rest of her family traveled first by Navy ship in a large convoy to San Francisco, then by train to Massachusetts, since dependents were to return to the place of enlistment.
In 1949, she moved with the rest of her family to San Diego where her father retired from the Navy. Not long after Thompson graduated from high school, she married and had two children.
But she always had the nagging question of whatever happened to her dancing sailor? When her husband died, she began to search earnestly for him. When she visited the USS Arizona Memorial in 1999, she told her story to the park ranger. He immediately got Thompson in touch with the curator who suggested she write a letter to the editor of Pearl Harbor Gram.
Once that letter published, things started to happen. A man named John Rutledge, editor of The Scuttlebutt in Pensacola had seen her and Evans dance that night.
“I couldn’t believe it. I finally had hope of finding him,” she said.
John printed the story in the paper and Evans finally got hold of her.
“After almost 59 years, I found out that he had been living only 15 miles from me for over 40 years,” she said, laughing.
Everyone at the La Mesa Lions’ Club meeting stood and clapped long and loud. Evans had a comment to add.
“Her father had actually invited me come over to chicken dinner the next day. But of course I never made it,” he said.
Evans and Thompson did officially dance again, however—at the 60th and 65th Pearl Harbor anniversary on the Arizona Memorial.
All meetings of the La Mesa Lions Club are open to the public. Guests are always welcome. Go to www.e-clubhouse.org/sites/lamesaca for more information.
