Remembering Pearl Harbor veteran Sen. Lawrence Jacobsen on 81st anniversary of attack

It was a dozen days after the attack on Pearl Harbor that readers of The Record-Courier learned that native son Lawrence “Jake” Jacobsen had survived the attack.

“Mrs. J.W. Watson received a radiogram from her son, Lawrence Jacobsen, one of Uncle Sam’s fighting men at Pearl Harbor that he was alive and well,” the Dec. 19, 1941 item read. “That the Carson Valley young man went through the Japanese bombing attack at the U.S. naval base in the Hawaiian Islands and lived to tell about it is gratifying to his relatives and friends in this community.”

Jacobsen was one of nearly 50 Carson Valley residents serving in the armed forces when the war began.

Born July 1, 1921, Jacobsen was the youngest of five boys.

When he graduated from Douglas County High School in 1938 at 17 years old he enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

His mother refused to sign the papers, so his older brother Melvin signed on behalf of his father, who’d died a dozen years earlier.

Jacobsen went to Navy aviation school and was sent to the Philippines where he worked on aircraft.

He went to sea aboard the carrier Yorktown and then volunteered for duty on the heavy cruiser Astoria, which had four floatplanes.

One of Jake’s favorite stories about shipboard life was one inspection.

“He shined his shoes, trying every trick he knew to make them look like new,” Bruce said. “The following day the ship’s captain held inspection and when he got to dad, he took his heel and ground it into the toe of dad’s shoe and said ‘Sailor, those shoes are too shiny.’”

On Dec. 6, 1941, the Astoria was returning to Hawaii after escorting the Lexington transporting aircraft to Midway.

The ship launched its planes and Jake spent that night in a hangar on Ford Island.

Bruce said he wouldn’t talk about what happened at Pearl Harbor, but would answer questions.

“I asked him what he did during the raid, half expecting a heroic answer, ‘we ran like hell was his reply.’ I don’t think that any of us can truly appreciate what these men went through at Pearl Harbor,” Jacobsen said. “My dad would have been 20 years old.”

One of Jake’s duties aboard ship was to pull the lanyard that released bodies for burial at sea.

The Astoria was at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, among several others.

Her last fight was the Battle of Salvo Island, a night battle where the Japanese attacked a convoy of Marines headed to Guadalcanal.

“Astoria was attacked unmercifully, with many sailors blown into shark-infested waters,” Bruce said. “It fought valiantly but was sunk later that morning.”

Its complement was in the water for hours before being rescued. The Astoria took 65 hits in that battle before she went sank.