Service for Sonoma’s ‘Oldest Marine’

Col. Harry Douglas Pratt, who passed away in Sonoma on Nov. 6 at the age of 97, was a classic example of what has been called “the Greatest Generation.” He was a U.S. Marine who took part in landings at Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima, but it was not his military skills that most distinguished his career.

“He was the real deal,” said Bob Leonard of Sonoma’s Wine Country Marines, an organization that Col. Pratt helped found in the 1980s. “He had a very distinguished career, and for the last few years of his life was known as our chapter’s ‘Oldest Marine’.”

Born in 1918, Pratt was a graduate student in languages at UCLA in 1941 when war with Germany and Japan seemed imminent, so he enlisted and was received into the Marine officer’s training course at Quantico, Virginia. His first assignment led him to the Pacific theater, where he volunteered to learn Japanese in a six-month crash course.

Over the next few years he put his language skills to the test, assisting in interrogating prisoners of war and eventually landing with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Manila as the war drew to a close.

He then became chief interpreter for the International War Crimes Commission, and among other tasks translated for the trial of Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita for war crimes.

Yamashita was sentenced to hang on Dec. 7, 1945, the fourth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Following the war, Pratt continued his military service at the Pentagon and as Naval Attaché in Tokyo, retiring from the Marine Corps in 1963. Even then his facility for languages came into play in the private sector, as he became Vice President of Marketing for Pepsi Cola in Japan and later for Royal Crown Cola in Manila.

He moved to Sonoma when he retired, and married Grace Helling. He helped found the Wine Country Marines along with Bruno Benziger and others, and started the group’s Birthday Ball tradition in 1985, which celebrates the founding of the U.S. Marine Corps.

The most recent Birthday Ball, the 30th, was held at Jacuzzi Winery in October 2015, and raised over $100,000 for the Semper Fi Fund for injured Marines.

The Oldest Marine is an honorific title, according to Leonard, entitling him to the first piece of the birthday cake served at the Birthday Ball. The second goes to the Youngest Marine.

Due to declining health, Pratt had been unable to attend the Birthday Ball for the past few years of his life.

He was cremated, and graveside committal services were held with full Military Honors at the Sonoma Veterans Cemetery yesterday, Nov. 30, under a gray sky of glowering rainclouds.

Another of the Greatest Generation is gone.