PORT TOWNSEND — Tom Berg, 89, has played the same violin since he was a teenager on the USS Tennessee.
“It’s a copy of a Stradivari,” he said in an interview from his Port Townsend home Thursday night.
“It’s nothing to write home about.”
Those who would disagree include Dewey Ehling, the Port Townsend Community Orchestra conductor who will lead a musical tribute Saturday night to Berg and four other survivors of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
The all-volunteer orchestra will begin the concert at 7:30 p.m. at the Chimacum High School auditorium, 91 West Valley Road. Admission is free, though donations are welcome.
Maestro Ehling will give a brief talk about the night’s music at 6:45 p.m.
Also Saturday night, Berg will take up the violin he’s kept since he was a Navy man of 19, the instrument that survived the Japanese bombings that infamous morning 70 Decembers ago.
Ehling and Berg, friends for a good 22 years now, will mark the anniversary with a night of patriotic music, plus a proclamation presented to four other Pearl Harbor survivors on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Peninsula survivors
While there is no longer a formal organization of Peninsula survivors, these men will come together Saturday night: Bill Mills and Bob Rains of Sequim, John Higgins of Chimacum and Lars Watson of Port Townsend.
They and Berg will be honored with a reading of President Barack Obama’s proclamation declaring Dec. 7 a national Day of Remembrance.
Berg is honorary concertmaster, and with Ehling, he has selected a George M. Cohan salute including “Yankee Doodle Boy” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” as well as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The orchestra also will celebrate Berg’s Norwegian heritage with selections from “Song of Norway.”
The concert’s second half will be given over to holiday music, from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and Handel’s “Water Music” to carols including “O Tannenbaum,” “Joy to the World” and “Angels We Have Heard.” The evening will end with “White Christmas.”
“Hopefully,” Berg joked, “somebody shows up.”
Berg grew up on the southern Olympic Peninsula in Aberdeen and enlisted in the Navy the summer after his high school graduation.
Following boot camp in San Diego, he shipped out as an apprentice seaman to Pearl Harbor and the 624-foot USS Tennessee.
Berg worked in the ship’s boiler rooms and whiled away his off hours playing his violin.
One Sunday morning in December, he was walking on deck, taking in some fresh air before descending to work.
He remembers seeing an airplane with a red, circular Japanese insignia dive-bombing — but didn’t yet believe his eyes.
Then the ship’s clarinet player came running and shouted that the Japanese were attacking, yet “everybody thought he was nuts,” Berg said.
Attack on ships
Right after that, the USS West Virginia was hit by a torpedo. That ship pushed up against the Tennessee, sending Berg off the bench he was sitting on.
He landed on his feet and joined the sailors crowding around a hatch that led belowdecks.
Another torpedo hit the West Virginia, which eventually suffered three torpedo and two bomb hits.
The nearby USS Oklahoma and the USS Arizona were hit, too, and the Arizona, exploding in flames, sent shock waves and billowing smoke through the Tennessee.
Five men died on the Tennessee, including one of Berg’s fellow gun crewmen.
The total death toll that day surpassed 3,500.
“A little later in the day, they sent me up to get water,” Berg recalled.
“I had to get drinking water for the gang, and I saw the devastation.
“It was horrible.”
Hospital ship
The Tennessee became a hospital ship, Berg said, where the wounded were brought in as the United States entered World War II.
Berg served for five more years in the Navy; he was discharged in 1946 back in San Diego and then moved to Bainbridge Island, where his family was living.
On the GI Bill of Rights, he earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Washington and went to work for the Boeing Co.
When the Korean War began in June 1950, Berg did not want to be drafted, so he went to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton to work as an engineer and stayed for 16 years.
He put in another 12 years at the Keyport Naval base and upon turning 55 was eligible for retirement.
“I took it,” he said.
Performed in PA, PT
During his time in Bremerton, Berg played in the local symphony. After retiring, he moved to Gardiner and joined the Port Angeles Symphony and then the Port Townsend Community Orchestra.
Through it all, he has had the violin acquired during his sophomore year of high school.
It survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Berg said, because it wouldn’t fit into his locker on the Tennessee.
Instead, the violin was stored in the ship’s band room, which happened to be below the water line.
Everything above the water line was scorched Dec. 7, while below it, the ship sustained relatively little damage.
Berg said his love of classical music, and of playing it in an orchestra, has kept him full of vigor.
It also led to his meeting Lesa Barnes, his wife of nearly 13 years.
Berg was serving on the Port Townsend Planning Commission while Barnes was the city Planning Department staffer assigned to the meetings.
Berg encouraged Barnes to take up her flute again after 20 years away from it.
She is now president of the Port Townsend Community Orchestra board, as well as a flutist in the orchestra.
She and her violinist married Feb. 12, 1999, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
