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Walter Gorr celebrates his 90th birthday on the Fourth of July

Photo by Glenn Moore/Our Town

It’s the kind of stuff Hollywood couldn’t script any better. Walter Gorr, born July 4, 1918, served in the U.S. Army during World War II and is a Pearl Harbor survivor. He recently celebrated his 90th birthday in Tracy, taking in the festivities at the Fourth of July parade and spending the day with his wife and family.

Gorr, originally from Shell Lake, Wis., joined the Army at 23 and was attached to the 34th Engineer Battalion. He was sleeping in his barracks not far from the naval base at Pearl Harbor when he was awakened to Japanese planes strafing his quarters. He and his fellow soldiers were immediately sent to help ease the devastation taking place at Hickam Field, where Army Air Corps personnel and aircraft were taking heavy losses.

“With something like that, you don’t have any emotions,” Gorr said. “You just do what you have to do.”

Gorr island-hopped through the Pacific with the U.S., inching closer to Japan as the war dragged on and eventually ended up on Okinawa. Scheduled to invade mainland Japan when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gorr left the Army a year after the war ended in 1946.

“I’d had enough of it (the Army),” Gorr said. “So, I went home and started working with my father, drilling water wells for farmers.”

Gorr and his wife, Dorothy, arrived in Tracy in 1962, and he took a teaching job at Tracy High School in industrial education, teaching shop class for a number of years. He has a son, Darrel Gorr, who lives in San Jose, and a daughter, Linda Hahn, who lives in Los Angeles. He lives at Astoria Gardens retirement home with his wife of 63 years.