WINNEMUCCA - Howard Harris, 93, has to sometimes wonder, which has been more difficult in his life, surviving World War II or working with local officials.
The chemical engineer had just begun a new job on Dec. 2, 1941, not realizing then that in just a few days Japan would bomb the Pearl Harbor Navel Base outside Honolulu, Hawaii.
He had worked for several companies in the northwest in the early forties as wartime needs changed. Harris had wanted to join the Army years before he actually did, but he was working in war material areas and they were reluctant to lose him.
However, he finally persevered and two days before his 25th birthday he joined the Army on Oct. 14, 1944. Hitler's Army was retreating and consolidating its forces, but was still a formidable power and the Japanese Navy, although hurt, was not in any way out of the race. Neither theater could be counted on as a sure win for the Allies when 24-year-old Harris raised his hand and took the oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
After basic training his division was to join the Battle of the Bulge in Europe as it was not going well initially, but as they waited to join in the Allies were able to turn the tide that was about to overwhelm them and Harris was instead sent to the Pacific.
He arrived in the Philippines on the island of Luzon not long after the famous return of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
"I had to take a message to him, to MacArthur, from our commanding officers," Harris said. "I was just outside his door and a bullet went SPLAT in that wall right above me."
The fighting was that close and soon Harris would be in the middle. Although the Japanese were being pushed back they were still a force to be reckoned with and Allied fighters were dying daily. American and Filipino forces were pursuing the Japanese who were not giving up an inch of the Philippines without a fight.
Harris and his outfit were moving forward toward Balete Pass, now Dalton Pass, an area that was easier for the Japanese to defend than the open fields. They expected a hard fight when they got there.
"About that time the biggest experience of my life was there," he said. "They called out all of our company and loaded us on trucks, there were seven trucks of us to go up to the line in front of the pass.
"The sergeant came out and called two men off the trucks, me and one other one to send back so that I could be a code operator," he said.
His company, on the way to relieve comrades in his division, was ambushed at the pass and all but seven died. He discovered what had happened to his friends when he was later walking along a road and saw a huge pile of bodies covered with blankets along side.
"The third or fourth blanket I lifted off was my buddy I was sitting beside in the truck," Harris said.
Later he had barely begun teaching code when they got word that the United States had dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
"It was about 11 o'clock when we got the word and we closed the school down," he said. "We went to Japan right after that."
Harris and his band actually ended up landing on the same beach in Japan that they had intended to land on before the peace agreement was signed, but after it was signed instead of meeting gunfire they were met with silence.
"If they hadn't dropped that bomb I would be dead today," he said. "because we looked up in the mountains surrounding the bay and it was just honeycombed, just honeycombed with cannon."
As they marched into town first children and then women came out to see them.
"The Japanese people were very nice people, generous people. I made some very good friends with the Japanese," he said.
In March of 1946 he returned to the states returning to work at the same company he had left, but now under the name Kaiser Chemical. It was during this time that he became a fully certified chemical engineer.
But somewhere along the line his interest turned to mining and in 1948, with a couple of partners, they started a mining company with a lease they had purchased in 1943 in property outside Lake Chelan, Wash. They were looking for gold, silver and copper.
Then began years of controversy with government agencies. The land they were working was surrounded by Forest Service property which decided to turn it into a park, immobilizing their claim and according to Harris they lost over $266,000.
"It was a dirty trick," he said.
But Harris continued his interest in mining and went prospecting in northern Washington just south of the Canadian border and even into Canada, eventually searching for valuable minerals here and there in the western states. But none of them produced much.
"We kinda made a living. Not a very good one, but a living," he admitted. "It wouldn't have been a living if my wife hadn't been working."
So in 1956 he went to work for Boeing Corporation where he stayed for five years.
Finally in 1963 he arrived in Humboldt County through an interest in the Sulphur District Crofoot Mine out Jungo Road way. Sulfur was being used in agriculture on the rice fields and he ended up with a contract to supply it to a mill. At the time sulfur was selling for $120 a ton, but almost immediately competition forced the price down to $16 a ton and they decided to close it down.
He and some others actually had a smelter in Imlay for a while buying gold from small miners, but that didn't turn out so well and he turned to mining in Idaho. In 1980 he began staking out claims on Winnemucca Mountain and still owns some of those today.
Harris said that they eventually turned some of those over to an outfit that spent $2.6 million exploring the possibilities, but in the meantime there has been a lot of disagreements between him and local officials over roads.
"Now they're trying to put a trail on Winnemucca Mountain," he said. "Well, we're trying to stop that. They're not going to go across our mining claims!"
Harris was born in Paul's Valley, Okla., and raised in Brinkman, Okla., until he was in his teens. Picking cotton was a major part of his life when he was little. In fact the first memory he has is of crawling through barb wire to get to his mother when he was three and a half.
"I got caught up on the barb wire fence and she had to help get me off," he said.
In 1931 the family went to California to visit his mother's uncle after which they took off and worked their way north picking fruit and working in the fruit stands on their way to northern Idaho.
"Times were tough, real tough," Harris remembers. Sometimes the kids would follow behind their mother picking up apricots and laying them out to dry. After arriving in Naples, Idaho, he said that things got a little bit better.
"Things were still tough up there, but not as bad as they would have been in Oklahoma or some of the other places," he said. "The first winter we were up there he (dad) killed seven deer for us to eat."
The next year his dad was able to get on at the sawmill and life continued to improve. The kids would pick huckleberries and sell them in town and today he still loves the taste of those berries.
He attended school through eighth grade in Naples and then went on to high school in Bonners Ferry about a dozen miles north.
In the summer after his sophomore year he found work as a woodsman for the Civilian Conservation Corps guiding people through the woods in that area.
"Led them through the woods so they didn't get lost," he said. "They were bringing them in from the cities back east and they didn't know anything about the woods."
Harris is the oldest with four younger brothers and two sisters. He met the love of his life while in college and has been married to Lucienne for 72 years.
"She was the most beautiful woman on campus," he said.
That union produced three children, Shannon, Terry and Darryl. Sadly Terry passed away in June of this year. Several grandchildren and great grandchildren help keep them young in mind and spirit.
Harris is well known in town as the dapper man in the hat and tie.
"I wear a hat to keep my head warm and to keep my brains from drying up or whatever," he said. And as for the tie it's worn whenever he is tending to business, he said.
Harris has lived in Winnemucca for 48 years and appreciates it for its mining culture.
"It's one of the main mining centers in the United States as a matter of fact," he said. "Humboldt County is lucky to have the mining business."
He remains busy staying active in the work he enjoys and sees no reason to lay around doing nothing, although he's not overdoing it.
"I still work at the mining business," Harris emphasized. "I work AT it!"
By Forrest Newton
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