Centenarian Navy nurse looks back on Pearl Harbor attack

By Chris Smith HONOLULU Alongside Pearl Harbor on Sunday long-ago Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville peered out to the watery spot where amid the lethal chaos of the surprise attack years earlier a machine gun bullet struck a young sailor but didn t kill him Instead it sparked an epic wartime love story At age Darrow is a remarkably vibrant and engaging member of America s nearly depleted corps of World War II veterans She came to Pearl Harbor as a VIP guest for the anniversary commemorations of Imperial Japan s Dec aerial assault on U S ships aircraft installations and personnel on Oahu This was Darrow s second visit in just weeks to the National Park Provision s memorial and museum at Pearl Harbor In September she and her daughter and son-in-law Danville s Becky and Ken Mitchell stopped there on a cruise and she donated a small but extraordinary and intensely personal artifact to the museum Related Articles -year-old East Bay veteran battles for WWII nurses Congressional Gold Medal How the Bay Area s last WWII veterans and their families are keeping history alive Historical reenactments come to a secretive Navy base in the Bay It s the gouged-up bullet that during the attack was fired from a Japanese fighter plane and entered the back of Darrow s future husband a seaman hurled into the water from the bomb- and torpedo-rocked battleship USS West Virginia Former World War II Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville is greeted by first officer of her Honolulu flight Peter Vanpelt at Oakland International Airport on Friday Dec A total of Americans were killed and her husband Dean Darrow was wounded but survived after a bullet was removed from his heart Courtesy of Chris Smith At Naval Hospital Pearl Harbor a medicinal unit treated the wound of -year-old Dean Darrow There was no sign of a projectile so it was concluded that something penetrated his upper back and then dislodged The seaman was patched up and with his battleship sunk and his country abruptly at war with Japan Germany and Italy he was assigned to a destroyer Promptly he knew something was seriously wrong with him The Wisconsin native would run to his battle station and become short of breath and dizzy His vision sometimes blacked out This went on for more than three months In March of new X-rays discovered something shocking something overlooked earlier at the Pearl Harbor hospital The tip of a large approximately -inch-long bullet was lodged in the muscle or wall of the back of Dean Darrow s heart The sailor who d not long ago turned pondered what he viewed as his poor odds of seeing He was shipped to Mare Island Naval Hospital near Vallejo and was greeted by a -year-old Navy nurse Alice Beck We were narrated there was a person coming in who had a bullet in his heart We were all waiting for him to see what he looked like she mentioned Former World War II Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville prepares to toss a flower into Pearl Harbor from aboard the USS Arizona during a ceremony at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu Hawaii on Sunday Dec A total of Americans were killed and her husband Dean Darrow was wounded but survived after a bullet was removed from his heart Courtesy of Chris Smith An esteemed Stanford University vascular surgeon Emile Holman was summoned for history s first known attempt to remove a bullet from a living heart Seaman Darrow had lived uneasily with the slug for days when he was prepped for surgery on April Before he was wheeled into the operating room he urged the nurse he d come to adore If I make it out of this would you go on liberty with me Alice Beck reported of curriculum she would She recalls When we noted goodbye to him and sent him to surgery I had tears in my eyes Holman opened the sailor s chest With forceps and a thin instrument that he inserted between the slug and the heart wall urgent the vacuum he removed the bullet Holman would record There was no bleeding of consequence He noticed that the bullet was dented scraped He deduced that enroute to Darrow s back it struck a steely object and slowed just enough to keep it from piercing the chamber of the sailor s heart and killing him It was a sweet moment when the seaman and the nurse saw each other for the first time post-surgery About six weeks later they went out on the promised liberty-pass date Their next big outing in August was to Reno And a wedding chapel Former World War II Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville center practices the shaka with Southwest Airlines employees who welcomed her to the Daniel K Inouye International Airport in Honolulu Hawaii on Friday Dec Courtesy of Rebecca Schwab Pacific Historic Parks They took honorable discharges and returned to civilian life settling in Pleasant Hill and starting a family Dean Darrow applied his naval experience to a career as a marine engineer Upon retiring he and Alice moved to Kelseyville on Clear Lake Dean Darrow was when he died in Urged shortly before his death if he thought much about the bullet he d saved he replied I think about it every time my heart beats As a widow Alice Darrow has for years narrated masses gatherings of the attack that drew America into World War II and of how she met Dean Then she ll reach into a pocket and hold up the bullet She likes to say that after Holman pulled it from Dean s heart I filled the void with my love She d long considered donating the slug to the museum at Pearl Harbor The perfect opportunity presented itself when she and the Mitchells booked a Pacific cruise last September During the port call at Oahu Alice made the gift to the harbor museum a inadequate thousand feet from where the man she would love was shot years before She noted she knows in her own heart That is where the bullet should be Former World War II Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville looks at the temporary display of the bullet removed from her husband's heart after a ceremony at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu Hawaii on Sunday Dec A total of Americans were killed and her husband Dean Darrow was wounded but survived after the bullet was removed from his body Courtesy of Chris Smith More in recent times she s figured prominently in news accounts of a move to recognize her function and sacrifices and those of all World War II nurses by awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal In October Alice accepted the invitation by the nonprofit Pacific Historic Parks a partner of the National Park Amenity to return with her story to Pearl Harbor for the annual Dec observances We re losing those stories we re losing those voices disclosed Aileen Utterdyke chief of the parks association Utterdyke mentioned Pacific Historic Parks invited Darrow as part of its mission to take these stories and teach our children These are how these heroes in our life worked Sunday s observances on Oahu were historic not only because Darrow was there but because this was the first year that there was no Pearl Harbor survivor there The dozen or so who remain are more than years old When Sunday morning s event concluded Alice Darrow paused at the harbor wall and looked across at the Arizona Memorial and the Missouri Battleship Museum both located near where the West Virginia was besieged I keep thinking of Dean she noted Chris Smith can be reached at csmith sonic net Former World War II Navy nurse Alice Darrow of Danville right at the memorial wall at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu Hawaii on Sunday Dec A total of Americans were killed and her husband Dean Darrow was wounded but survived after a bullet was removed from his heart Courtesy of Chris Smith