The ceremony at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ San Antonio office was, by any measure, more than what Heinz Bachman is used to these days.
At 99 a quiet widower who mostly stays home and watches classic movies and Lawrence Welk re-runs, he was a tad overwhelmed as friends and government officials celebrated his swearing-in by Tina Almond, the agency’s field office director.
“This is a wonderful thing,” he said after raising his right hand and taking the oath of citizenship. “You know when you come this long in life, you wonder why, why did it take so long?”
The answer began at his birthplace, Mülhausen, Germany, and was to end at a Texas Department of Public Safety driver’s license office, where Bachman needed proof of citizenship so he can legally keep driving.
He because a U.S. citizen when his father was naturalized in 1934, but didn’t have the proof needed to renew his driver’s license.
And, yes, he has a car, a 1998 Mercury Sable he bought from a rental company years ago. The vehicle is a bit like him — high mileage, in good condition, and one with a back story, thanks to its history as a rental.
At the citizenship ceremony, he was seen as a classic.
“He’s just amazing, just an amazing gentleman,” Almond said. “The things that he has seen in his life (are) just unbelievable and to be able to do this for him was fantastic today.”
Bachman can’t remember the day his mother, Anna Bachman, brought him to America in 1924. He arrived at Ellis Island when he was just 3.
Bachman went into the Army at Fort Dix, N.J., in 1939 and was stationed in Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was at Hickam Field on Dec. 7, 1941, but missed the worst of it.
A sergeant, he qualified for a pilot training program but didn’t pass, later thought he might get shipped to North Africa but didn’t. When the war in Europe ended, he interviewed German civilians for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey.
Pearl Harbor, it turned out, was his only combat experience. Each step after pilot training brought him closer to a long life, but Bachman is matter of fact about it — as he is about most everything.
“Once you’re eliminated from a certain program, then you’re put back to the basics again and they put you where they think they can use you,” he said.
Bachman is so low-key almost no one in San Antonio outside of his neighbors knew he was a rare local Pearl Harbor survivor.
Ask about that and Bachman will tell you he never was much on socializing. He drives to the grocery store and the doctor’s office, but stays off the freeway and doesn’t go out of town. He watches science, travel and car shows and golf on cable TV.
An ever-dwindling group of Pearl Harbor survivors meet every year to mark the anniversary, but he didn’t know about them. They numbered four until Navy veteran Abner James “A.J.” Dunn died Nov. 23 in Floresville. He was 98.
Bachman was never a joiner but has been even more careful in the COVID-19 era, wearing his mask, avoiding crowds and getting his coronavirus vaccine.
He’s had both shots but still wore his mask at Thursday’s citizenship ceremony.
“I’m not a social animal so I never have been one to mingle with people anyway,” he said. “All my friends have passed on, man! That’s the sad part.”
But Bachman still has a sharp mind and a lot of memories. On the Sunday morning in Hawaii that would plunge the United States into World War II, he was up early — “I don’t miss breakfast,” he said. Bachman was on a work detail when the first Japanese planes shattered the calm. Two waves of carrier-based attacks would soon leave the pride of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet in ruins. .
“The Navy got the worst of it, then they came by and started shooting up Wheeler Field, where the fighters were stationed, and then they came by and started shooting up Hickam Field, and shooting up all the planes there, and did some bombing on the buildings and then did a lot of strafing.”
Asked if he had any close calls, Bachman replied, “No, not really, but I was fortunate enough not to be in the main building that morning. I was on detached service on another part of the field and the main building got hit, right in the middle of the building.”
Japanese pilots flew so low, Bachman could see their faces.
“They were close enough, yes, definitely. It was a shock,” he said. “I knew who they were when they came. I recognized it right away. It’s just something you have to experience, in the flesh you might say.
“It happened so suddenly and the realization came finally after it was all over, boy, we really could have had a disaster there – a bigger one. They could have invaded us.”
Congress declared war the next day, but for many months, the momentum would with Japan, which rolled up U.S. and British forces in a rapid march across most of Southeast Asia.
Bachman applied for pilot training, getting in under a program that allowed enlisted sergeants to become aviators. Things went really well until the very end.
“I learned to fly, I soloed, and I was real happy about it and thought, well, maybe I got it made,” he recalled. “And then on the last check flight they said, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not qualified for being a fighter pilot and your choice is to turn into bombardier or the heavy bombing,’ and I said, ‘No, thanks, I don’t care to be in any of that,’ so I declined it.”
That kept him in the United States until the war in Europe ended. Once done with his work with the Strategic Bombing Survey, Bachman considered staying in the Army but decided that with a wife, Virginia, and a son, Lawrence, he needed to make better money.
Back at Fort Dix, he became a civilian again, and went into business with his father doing farming and electrical work. Bachman was shocked that winter when four feet of snow fell. The contrast didn’t sit well after Hawaii, so he kept moving, to Kansas at first.
“I worked for the railroad a couple of weeks and did a little wheat farming, and then from there I got into contact with a fellow I was in the service with, a friend who had moved to San Antonio. And we corresponded and he said, ‘Why don’t you come down here and take up residence? We’ll find you a job.’ And I’ve been here ever since.”
Bachman worked for a series of car dealerships as an electrical mechanic who did tune-ups and sales. He lost his wife 22 years ago and his son seven or eight years ago.
His next-door neighbor, Linda Arce, 63, has known him 56 years. He comes over to her house for Thanksgiving and other social events. They’ve become best friends.
“We’ve been taking care of each other the whole time,” she said. “I call him all the time. If he doesn’t answer, like this morning he didn’t answer so I go over there with my umbrella, ‘Why aren’t you answering the phone?!’ I didn’t want anything to be happening to him.”
It turned out Bachman didn’t have his hearing aid on.
“He tells me, ‘Slow down, don’t take it so hard with everything that goes on,’ because I worry about the world. And he’s just like, ‘Let it go.’”
That philosophy is kind of like his 1998 Mercury, which he takes on short, leisurely drives.
“The four wheels still roll and, what the heck, that’s all I need. It’ll keep going. I’ll push that machine until it quits.”
