Jack Merl SPANGLER

6 MAR 1921 - 8 DEC 2008

• BIRTH: 6 MAR 1921, Bridgman, Berrien, MI
• DEATH: 8 DEC 2008, Bridgman, Berrien, MI

INDEX

[N30958] Pearl Harbor: Jack Spangler’s Story

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 80 years ago, Sergeant Jack Spangler was on his way to the Post Exchange for breakfast at the Wheeler Airfield base. His friend Phillip Paragan had awoken him, but the two men didn’t make it to breakfast before the attack started. They were only a block away when the first bombs dropped, and Jack thought he was going to die. Jack Merl Spangler was born on March 6, 1921 to Joseph Spangler and Nettie Fuller in Bridgman, Michigan. He went to grade school in Attica, Indiana. His childhood was rough, having been abandoned by his mother around the age of seven or eight. It was the time of the Depression and an extra mouth to feed led many families to shuffle around their children to whichever relative could afford to feed them. For a time, Jack even lived on the streets. By 1940, he’d graduated from Bridgman High School, and he enlisted into the Army Air Force later that year at the age of 19 as a pilot. He was no less lonely stationed in Hawaii in the service, and he would write letters to his mother and grandmother back home in Bridgman about how lonely and homesick he felt, letters that would be discovered in the back of a closet in an old farmhouse and later in his safe after he died.On that fateful day of infamy, Jack was only 20-years-old. He didn’t know what was happening when the explosions went off. He told the Herald Palladium in 2001 that he couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he saw two Japanese dive bombers with the “red meatball” insignia on the side of the fuselage. The “red meatball” was the rising sun flag of Japan. Jack saw a bomb falling straight out of the sky and towards him. It seemed suspended in midair, and time slowed down to almost nothing. It landed across the street from him and the impact gave Jack a concussion and knocked him unconscious. When he woke, he crawled to the lower level of the barracks where he knew mattresses were stored. Once he found shelter, a major came in looking for anyone experienced in shooting 50 caliber machine guns. Spangler answered his call, and the two men went to the roof with two machine guns and an anti-aircraft mount, shooting at enemy planes until the guns got too hot to fire. Around 4:00 they were ordered to the west perimeter of the airfield to shoot down anything above them from a defensive trench they dug out. At one point they even shot down a Navy plane, but luckily the pilot survived the crash. For the rest of his life, Jack never was able to shake the image of a Japanese bomber, diving so close to the airfield that he could see the grin plastered across his face.
The attack on Pearl Harbor is known as one of the worst attacks in American military history, and it prompted President Roosevelt to enter us into World War II. After all was said and done, the attack killed 2,403 people, wounded 1,178 others, destroyed 188 American war planes, sank four battleships and damaged the other four at the base. The attack crippled our ability to fight back with air power. Japan was conquering southeast Asia and aimed to prevent us from interfering with their conquest. They were also hoping to destroy morale in order to enter into a peace treaty with us. But the attack had the opposite reaction. We declared war on Japan the very next day. Jack served another four years in the military, raising in ranks to Corporal in March of 1942 and Technical Sergeant in June of that same year. His military discharge papers list his achievements: an American Defense Service Ribbon with Bronze Star for the attack on Pearl Harbor, an Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with a Bronze Battle Star, seven overseas service bars, one service stripe, and a good conduct medal. He was honorably discharged in September of 1945. A newspaper article in the Herald Press in 1944 wrote that he was home on furlough, visiting friends and family. It mentioned that he was mum about the horrors he’d witnessed, and that he wanted to start a flying school after his time in the service. He ended up earning his personal pilot’s license and becoming an architect and home builder to make a living. Something else happened in 1944 before he was furloughed. He married a Japanese American artist by the name of Evelyn Kawamoto. Evelyn and Jack had two daughters. But in 1942, as he was rising through the ranks, local papers were referring to him as the fiance of Grace Bodin of Chicago, Illinois. Jack didn’t marry Grace. But in 1946, Jack ended up marrying a cousin of Grace Bodin, Betty Lou Ambler. He was married to Betty for 54 years before she died in 2000 at the age of 74. Together, they had five children. He stayed mum about his experiences in Pearl Harbor until after Betty died. Family and friends could tell that war had changed him. His half-sister told the Herald Palladium in 2001 that before the war, Jack had been a sweet boy but after the war, he was standoffish and afraid to get close to people for fear of losing them. But in his later years, especially after he wife died, he began forging renewed connections with his family, even his two daughters back in Hawaii. He’d lost contact with Evelyn and she died in 1988, but their two daughters met Jack’s other children when Jack’s Michigan kids took their dad to Hawaii after Betty had passed away. The letters Jack wrote to this mother and grandmother showed up in the closet of a farmhouse where his mother lived. They were returned to Jack’s mother and after she died, they were given back to Jack. He placed them in his safe and they were discovered years after his death by his daughter, Julee. In a Herald Palladium article from 2011, she describes how the letters shed a new light on her late father, and she understood him more after reading them. According to Julee, Jack was just trying to show that he was worthy of love. As one of the first Americans to fire on the enemy in World War II, Jack Spangler became a hero. In addition to his courageous feats on December 7th, he was wounded in the Battle of Midway as well. After the war, Jack lived in Berrien County until 1955. Then he moved to California until 2005, when he came back home again. He died on December 8, 2008 at the age of 87. The Bangor VFW Post 9355 performed full military rites at his funeral and he was laid to rest at Betty’s side, in Graceland Cemetery, in Lake Township. The back of his gravestone identifies him as a Pearl Harbor survivor. Jack told the Herald Palladium in 2001 that the attack on Pearl Harbor taught him to live his life day by day. His obituary affectionately referred to him as a Jack of all trades and a legend whose wisdom and understanding will surely be missed. It continues, “May he still speak to us in our dreams and hearts forever.”
Eighty years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jack Spangler is still speaking to us.
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