Memories of Pearl Harbor stay with LI vet

On Pearl Harbor Day, Frank Castronovo usually heads to Republic Airport for the remembrance ceremony, but he missed yesterday's event, the arthritis in his left leg so bad it hurt to move. Besides, he needs no help remembering: he was there, a young Army corporal who woke in his barracks at five minutes to 8 that morning, seconds before what seemed like the end of the world.

"I hear this awful roar," he said, sitting at the dining room table of his Elmont home Tuesday. "It gets louder and louder, closer and closer. Like a damn fool, I run out into the quad and look up. They go right over my head and they hit Wheeler Field. They wiped out the planes first and went right into Pearl Harbor and dropped them bombs - wave after wave and they didn't stop."

The sun was shining when the first Japanese bombers attacked and he could see the glint of the water and in the distance the havoc of Wheeler, where men ran in terror like rabbits. Fifteen minutes later he could see nothing because of the smoke. "It was like midnight," he said.

Castronovo and his comrades in Company E, 25th Infantry, 35th Division, spent the next two weeks stringing barbed wire on the beaches of Oahu in preparation for a Japanese invasion that never came. They spent the next seven months with their unit in the Pacific. At Guadalcanal, he lost three friends when he left a ridge position to re-up supplies.

"I got up, instead of rolling down the hill," he said. Perhaps the enemy saw him move; more likely they just heard him. "They opened up on a machine gun. All three of them were hit. I shouldn't be here. I have no right to be here."

Castronovo came back to the United States on Dec. 12, 1944, and was later discharged, having served more than four years. He worked as a Port Authority police officer for several years but spent most of his working life in construction.

Now Castronovo is 92. He is active in American Legion Elmont Post 1033, which recently honored him with a lifetime membership, and belongs to a group of Long Island's Pearl Harbor survivors. There used to be around 63. Now they are down to four - one of whom is in failing health - and Castronovo has missed the past few meetings because his hasn't been great either.

He was sorry to have missed the remembrance ceremony but needed no help remembering.

"I go to bed sometimes and the war comes back to my head. It hits me like a ton of bricks," he said. "What they did to them poor sailors - they didn't have time to put their shoes on. They were murdered in their sleep."