Pearl Harbor vet's dress didn't make movie

Sun | Local

BELLEVUE (AP) - Robert Graves was at Pearl Harbor aboard USS Utah when the bombs began whistling down from Japanese planes and the world blew into hell.

He says the three-hour blockbuster movie left out the part about his dress.

As the Utah went down, Graves stripped off his heavy Navy clothes and jumped into the harbor - a skinny 17-year-old farm boy who couldn't swim.

When he'd managed to dog-paddle to shore, an officer spotted him out of uniform and ordered him to find something - anything - to wear.

The only thing he could find in the chaos was a pink dress from a charity bag. He put it on and wore it as he helped pull the remains of American sailors from the harbor.

"I wore that dress for three days. It became bloodied and gored, and finally I found something else," said Graves, 76, of Bellevue, recalling the 10 days spent recovering the dead.

The experience, still seared into his being nearly 60 years later, came back with a vengeance Saturday as Graves watched the filmed images of enemy bombers, sinking battleships and drowning men. He said he couldn't help reliving the smells, sounds and sights of that Sunday morning - sensory overload that haunted his dreams for 10 years after the attack.

"The thunder of bombs, the noise of the planes strafing, the gunfire - it brings back an awful lot of memories," he said.

That's why some of his fellow survivors refuse to see the film, said Graves, chairman of the state's Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

But it is, in the end, just a movie. And "Pearl Harbor," like "Titanic," is a love story with a historical backdrop - not a documentary.

"I don't think the hell I went through could ever be captured in a movie," Graves said.

There are inaccuracies, he noted, as others have said.

The water was not that cinematic blue-green. There's no mention of the prostitutes who helped civilian and Navy nurses tend the wounded. The bombers weren't that close to the U.S. ships. There's too much flame.

But the message survives, Graves said.

"By remembering Pearl Harbor, we get America to think about staying alert. We get the public to understand why we need to be ready at all times," he said.

"Movies like this are good. They remind us of our history ... the price we pay for freedom."