Leslie Harris “Pat” Norris (1921-1995)

Pearl Harbor Survivor. One of nine children, he was 18 years old when World War II began in Europe. Along with four other brothers, he enlisted in 1941 in the U.S. Navy. By October of that year, he was assigned to the Battleship Oklahoma making his way to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. At the age of twenty, Norris was serving as a seaman on the USS Ramsay, an old World War I destroyer where his older brother Millard was also assigned. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. At the order of his captain, he began to hand out rifles and ammunition as his brother Millard aided in firing up the engines to escape the harbor. He witnessed the sinking of the Battleships Utah and Nevada. His ship stayed at sea for nine days, returning to see the battleship Arizona still burning, and the battleships West Virginia, California, Oklahoma sunk and the incredible loss of life that engendered. In the following weeks, his ship placed over 11,000 mines in the South Pacific. His last wartime assignment was on the U.S.S. Shamrock Bay during the Asiatic Pacific campaign. He returned to Pearl Harbor in 1964. He and his four brothers all survived the war. He was a life member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. He was also a retired cabinet maker and a former mayor of Wheatland in the 1990s.

Bio by: Winter Birds PA