Army Air Corpsman Ramon Carazo, 18, didn’t know that his life was going to be changed forever on Dec. 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbor.

One of 22 men and working as a mechanic inside a hangar, he heard planes flying above and the talk was that the Japanese were coming to play the Americans in a friendly game of baseball.

The lone survivor

Ramon’s son, Frank, told his father’s story about what happened next.

“There were explosions and fires everywhere. My father was thrown against the back of the hangar. His left arm had been completely severed from his shoulder. He was able to make a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding. He then walked three-quarters of a mile to the infirmary, where he passed out.”

What Ramon did not know was that he was the only man from the hangar to survive the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was transported as one of the first casualties to the new Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he was put into a full body cast.

Frank Carazo, a 74-year resident of Palmerton, hadn’t found out about what happened at Pearl Harbor and other details about his father’s life until two weeks before his dad had died.

“Whenever my brothers and I would ask him about the war or how he lost his arm, he’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Then my cousin’s granddaughter was assigned to interview a family member from an older generation and my dad told us everything while in the hospital before he died.”

Frank would discover that his father nearly lost his right hand. His leg and back were loaded with shrapnel. The doctors had inserted what was compared to a “tennis racket” on his right hand.

“He had a metal plate attached on his hand and rods inserted along each finger,” said Frank. “It took him two years to recuperate from his injuries.”

Frank said his father was fitted with an artificial left arm.

“It’s not like what they have now. It was rudimentary and he could only use it for picking things up. My dad didn’t like it because he was afraid if he had kids one day, he might drop them, so he took the thing off and never used it again.”

While he was still recovering, Ramon got a job in Jupiter, Florida, working on engines for Briggs and Stratton.

A family man

When Ramon was 4 years old, he became an orphan along with his two brothers after both of their parents had died from cancer.

Raised by an uncle named Manuel Siergo in DePue, Illinois, the family moved to Palmerton when Ramon was 14 years old.

Two years after the attack, he married his high school sweetheart, Eleanor Partel.

Ramon then attended Muhlenberg College, where he approached their football coach, Ben Schwartzwalder, who later went on to become a hall of fame coach at Syracuse.

“So, here’s my father with one arm asking the coach to play quarterback at Muhlenberg,” said Frank.

“Of course, Ben said no, but he offered to train him to take a job as football scout, so he left school to do that for about a year and a half.”

By 1946, Ramon and Eleanor had two sons, Ramon and David with another on the way who would become Frank. In 1948, Steven was born and Lorraine came into the family in 1951.

“In about 53 months, they had four sons,” said Frank. “My mother never stood up without getting dizzy.”

A sporting life

Ramon was an extraordinary father with the abilities of people who had both of their arms, according to his son.

He taught his boys how to play baseball, football, basketball and golf.

By tossing a baseball up in the air with his right hand and before it could hit the ground, he’d swing the bat with his one arm and hit the ball to his sons.

Over the course of 35 years, he had six holes-in-one on the golf course.

He taught Eleanor how to play golf and she became a five-time champion at Blue Ridge Country Club.

He then was a professional golf instructor and gave lessons to dignitaries like New York Giants Super Bowl winning quarterback Phil Simms.

Ramon’s list of athletic activity and influence was all-encompassing. He also coached the Palmerton American Legion baseball team to second-place finishes in the state tournaments.

“My dad was amazing at what he could do,” said Frank. “At age 43, he even water skied with his one arm.”

A man about town

Ramon had struck up a friendship with Pennsylvania state congressman, Francis Walter who had visited him at Walter Reed Hospital.

Walter was instrumental in getting Ramon the postmaster’s job in Palmerton. Their friendship continued for years and together they were invited several times to have dinner with President Harry Truman.

As postmaster, Ramon made it his business to get to know just about everyone in Palmerton and he was a self-appointed welcoming committee when anyone moved into town.

“Every morning he’d get up and tie his own shoes with one hand and from 1948 to 1983, he went to work every day. He was very active in the community,” said Frank.

“He would drive veterans to their appointments at the VA hospital. He helped collect money to have a veteran’s memorial built in the park with marble slabs and bricks installed with their names engraved on them.”

A lifelong legacy

Ramon left his mark upon the town Palmerton ever since he came home from the Army after he was greeted with a welcoming parade of 5,000 people, but there was still one thing he had to do. In 1990, he decided to return to Hawaii to visit the site of the Pearl Harbor attack.

“The memories for him when he returned were devastating, “said Frank. “He was invited to go back again the next year for the 50th anniversary, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.”

Ramon Carazo died in 2007 at the age of 85 and Eleanor lived to be 94 before she passed away in 2011.

Frank’s three brothers all did tours in Vietnam, but he was disqualified for having poor eyesight.

His sight might be diminished, but Frank, a retired Northern Lehigh High School teacher and his wife, Frances, and their two children, Marc and Amy, hold on to vivid memories of his father.

“When we were kids, he wrestled with us all at one time on the floor and he’d win when he hit us with his stump,” said Frank with a laugh. “He’d wake us up every morning the same way.”

When asked to put into words the legacy his father left to his family and to the people of Palmerton, Frank said, “My father was a very sympathetic and considerate man. He never blamed the Japanese pilots for the attack; he blamed their government. He was a hero of the downtrodden and took care of those he thought were less fortunate than him.”

Fortunate to survive the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ramon Carazo took a second chance he got at life and became a loving father and a pillar of the Palmerton community.