Obit Pearl Harbor Survivor Ira Schab© Mengshin Lin
World War II Navy veteran Ira “Ike” Schab, one of the dwindling number of survivors of the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 105.
Daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs told The Associated Press that Schab died at home early Saturday in the presence of her and her husband.
With his passing, there remain only about a dozen survivors of the surprise attack, which killed just over 2,400 troops and propelled the United States into the war.
Obit Pearl Harbor Survivor Ira Schab© Audrey McAvoy
Schab was a sailor of just 21 at the time of the attack, and for decades he rarely spoke about the experience.
But in recent years, aware that the corps of survivors was dwindling, the centenarian made a point of traveling from his home in Beaverton, Oregon, to the annual observance at the Hawaii military base.
Obit Pearl Harbor Survivor Ira Schab© Eugene Tanner
“To pay honor to the guys that didn’t make it,” he said in 2023.
For last year’s commemoration, Schab spent weeks building up the strength to be able to stand and salute.
But this year he did not feel well enough to attend, and less than three weeks later, he passed away.
Born on Independence Day in 1920 in Chicago, Schab was the eldest of three brothers.
He joined the Navy at 18, following in the footsteps of his father, he said in a February interview for Pacific Historic Parks.
On what began as a peaceful Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Schab, who played the tuba in the USS Dobbin’s band, was expecting a visit from his brother, a fellow service member assigned to a nearby naval radio station. Schab had just showered and donned a clean uniform when he heard a call for fire rescue.
He went topside and saw another ship, the USS Utah, capsizing. Japanese planes roared through the air.
“We were pretty startled. Startled and scared to death,” Schab recalled in 2023. “We didn’t know what to expect, and we knew that if anything happened to us, that would be it.”
He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun above.
His ship lost three sailors, according to Navy records. One was killed in action, and two died later of fragment wounds from a bomb that struck the stern. All had been manning an anti-aircraft gun.
Schab spent most of the war with the Navy in the Pacific, going to the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu, and then the Mariana Islands and Okinawa, Japan.
After the war he studied aerospace engineering and worked on the Apollo spaceflight program as an electrical engineer for General Dynamics, helping send astronauts to the moon.
Schab’s son also joined the Navy and is a retired commander.
Speaking at a 2022 ceremony, Schab asked people to honor those who served at Pearl Harbor.
“Remember what they’re here for. Remember and honor those that are left. They did a hell of a job,” he said. “Those who are still here, dead or alive.”
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Winchester’s WSSM’s: Is It A Total Fail?
Almost before the bodies were cold at Australia’s Bondi Beach, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his colleagues were talking about stricter gun control laws, including limits on the number of licensed firearms an Australian citizen could own, and preventing non-citizens from getting a gun license.
Amid the anguish, there were some social media sneers at Americans for the number of mass shootings reported in the U.S., most of which happen in so-called “gun-free zones,” where the victims are just as disarmed as those who died at the Hannukkah celebration in Sydney.
But Albanese and his cheerleaders could learn something from us Yanks, and from Jews in Israel, where the threat of violence hovers over the population every single day.
Proponents of Australian-style disarmament deliberately ignore, or significantly downplay, the other side of this dilemma. Fifteen of Albanese’s countrymen are dead because they could not fight back.
Here’s a brief refresher of recent history to put this in perspective:
Back on Sept. 8 in East Jerusalem, two Palestinian killers opened fire at a bus station, viciously gunning down more than 20 people, killing six of them, until at least two people, including an armed private citizen, returned fire. Both attackers were fatally shot. The armed civilian was joined by an off-duty soldier in the armed response.
How many lives might have been saved had Australians been able to fight back, as their contemporaries half a world away?
When CBS News reported the East Jerusalem shooting, it waited until the sixth paragraph to mention how the attack was stopped. When the BBC initially reported the mass shooting, it noted the off-duty soldier and armed civilian “neutralized” the attackers.
Jump back in time to July 17, 2022 when a crazed killer opened fire in the food court at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana.
Armed with a rifle, the gunman fatally shot two people and likely would have upped the score, except for the quick actions of 22-year-old Elijah Dicken, a legally-armed private citizen who—firing from a distance estimated at 40 yards—put eight of the ten shots he fired into the murderer, ending the rampage.
This incident happened barely two months after an armed female citizen in Charleston, West Virginia put an end to what could have been a deadly mass shooting by a man identified as 37-year-old Dennis Butler.
As reported by WRAL News at the time, Butler’s misadventure started with him “speeding up and down a parking lot” inside an apartment complex where people were attending a graduation party and birthday party. When they asked him to slow down, he left and then returned to up the game, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, with which he opened fire.
But the unidentified armed citizen drew her legally carried handgun and stopped him, cold.
Lt. Tony Hazelett, with the Charleston Police Department, told reporters at the time, “This lady was carrying a lawful firearm. A law abiding citizen who stopped the threat of probably 20 or 30 people getting killed. She engaged the threat and stopped it. She didn’t run from the threat, she engaged it. Preventing a mass casualty event here in Charleston.”
Back in May of this year, a legally armed private citizen fatally shot a teen gunman who had just opened fire on two other people in downtown Seattle.
According to KING News, the young shooter—illegally armed with a handgun under Washington statute—was leaving the scene when the 57-year-old armed citizen drew his handgun and fired.
In early November, again in downtown Seattle, a pair of armed would-be carjackers made what firearms authority Massad Ayoob might call a critical error in the victim selection process.
They attempted to steal a sports car at gunpoint, only to be shot by the car’s owner. As reported by KOMO News at the time, both suspects ended up in the same hospital—one was dumped there by two other suspects, who quickly fled—while police arrested the other wounded man who was transported to the hospital.
When golf pro Phil Mickelson posted a message on ‘X’ about the Bondi Beach mass shooting, he observed, “The 2 terrorists didn’t seem affected by the strict gun laws already in place. In fact the shooting went on for a long time since there wasn’t anybody else with a gun to stop them. I’m not a big gun guy but even I’m not this dumb to believe what this guy is selling.”
He is catching lots of heat from anti-gunners, but self-defense-oriented people are coming to his defense with remarks including:
- “If Australia had a right to bear arms then this attack would not have even started.”
- “Both those killers would have been easy pickins if they had concealed carry over there. They didn’t even try to hide.”
- “Civilians bravely tried to stop the assailants – even without firearms – what armed police on the scene failed to. Two were killed outright and one wounded for the attempt. Even a few armed civilians with guns might have had a fighting chance to limit the tragedy.”
It is true that mass shootings in Australia are rare, but when they happen, nobody can fight back. Things are different in the U.S. and Israel.
Politicians like Prime Minister Albanese have armed security, while the people on Bondi Beach did not have that luxury. Citizens in Israel can get gun permits and can fight back. Millions of citizens in the U.S. can legally carry, and they have fought back.
Australia’s strict gun laws didn’t prevent the Bondi Beach mayhem. There’s a lesson in that for Prime Minister Albanese.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
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Happy Winter Solstice N.S.F.W.
