by Brett Ashton
“My God, Susan and James are at the hospital, and that plane might have just crashed into it!” I thought as fear began to rise in me like never before. “Not my wife and son!” The thought of ordering the driver of the boat over to hospital briefly crossed my mind, but my sense of duty intervened. The dispensary on Ford Island was closer and I couldn’t tie up this boat for personal reasons when so many others were in need of its help. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Susan and James were most likely okay and would have to wait, and I would just have to hope. I’ll try to get a message over to them as soon as I can.
Susan, in addition to being a patient in the maternity ward at the time, was also a nurse at the hospital. If I knew my wife, she would be doing everything she could, not only to take care of herself and James, but to take care of every other patient she could, in spite of the fact that she had delivered a baby just several days earlier. “They’re alright,” I told myself as I tried to push them to the back of my mind.
The small boat rounded the bow of the Maryland and the smell of burning oil was heavy in the air. The wind was blowing the smoke off to the west, which meant we would have to pass through it to get to the dispensary once we got on the island.
Looking around, I saw smoke and fire everywhere, but still I couldn’t take my eyes off of the direction of the hospital. And the Japs were still coming. One dive bomber planted a bomb right on the destroyer in the floating dry dock near Hospital Point. And then another, and another. Several others dropped bombs on the Pennsylvania and other ships in dry dock with her.
The boat I was on landed, and I proceeded to try to help unload the injured, almost forgetting I was one of them. There was a chief on the beach with a small truck, which was no doubt intended for use as a makeshift ambulance. I helped him load the injured and told him to go ahead and take them to the dispensary. As I turned to look back across the harbor toward the hospital, I felt a tug on my arm as the chief said, “With all due respect sir, don’t you think you should come with us?”
I noticed the side mirror of the truck was pointing in my direction and was shocked at the reflection that I saw. I was almost unrecognizable, even to myself. That was when I got the first look at my whole self since the attack began. I was covered with blood, some of it my own, and oil. It wasn’t twenty minutes before that I was eating breakfast in the wardroom with my fellow officers in a clean-pressed uniform, laughing and talking about Babe Ruth. Things had become so suddenly and drastically different that it seemed ages ago.
From that reflection, I don’t know how he even knew I was an officer, but somehow I sensed, lieutenant commander or not, respect or not, this chief wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And he was probably right anyhow, so I got onto the truck.
We were among the earliest wounded to arrive at the dispensary, so we got treated pretty quickly. The medical crew was obviously preparing for an influx of injured patients as we arrived. I got my wounds cleaned and stitched in no time. The doctor wanted to put a unit of blood in me and give me something for pain. I asked him if I would live without them. He said yes, so I declined, telling him to save them for somebody who needed them more. He ordered me to stay off my feet as much as possible and not to leave the dispensary grounds until I was released because I was low on blood and could potentially pass out.
A little bit later, I was on the ground floor of the dispensary near the center courtyard. A nurse was yelling at me to “stop trying to help move other injured patients because I would rip out the stitches in my side, and they weren’t going to bother sewing me up again,” when I heard more level bombers flying overhead. These were close. I looked out the window up at the sky and saw a plane release a bomb.
For the second time in the same day, time changed for me. In almost slow motion, the bomb glided down from the plane that released it, straight toward us in the dispensary. Without thinking, I quickly grabbed the nurse and shoved her to the floor and away from the window while shouting “Everybody down! Incoming!”
There was a dull thud and the sound of small debris pelting the window as the bomb hit the ground just outside. “This is it,” I thought. “I’m going to die.”
Most bombs for naval applications have a trigger device that keeps them from going off on impact so they penetrate to the inside of their target and blow them apart from within. They do more damage that way. “It’s a timed device,” I thought, “Any second now.”
I looked at the face of the nurse lying on the floor next to me. She was very pretty, maybe five to ten years younger than me, light brown shoulder-length hair and obviously scared to death. As the seconds ticked by, I watched the expression on her face change from fear to wonderment, as I’m sure mine did, when we gradually realized we were still alive, and likely to remain that way for at least awhile.
Slowly we got up and went over to the window and looked out. In the courtyard, embedded right there in the pavement, little more than ten feet from the window was a bomb. It was a dud.
I looked at the nurse, and she looked back at me. Before I knew what was happening she grabbed me and gave me a hug and said to me with a smile as she released me, “Okay sailor, I’ll fix your stitches this time, but never again.” I looked down at my side and saw blood seeping through the bandages. Sure enough, some of them had come undone.
As she put more stitches in my side, I overheard somebody say “Hey, one of the battleships is underway and making a run for it!” Even being low on blood with stitches in my head and side, I still had to go out to see the ship that was attempting to escape. As soon as the nurse finished putting the bandages back on, I got up and began making my way to the exit.
Stepping over and around the injured that were rapidly beginning to pile up everywhere, I went out onto the lawn of the dispensary. “They probably could use a little extra space in here anyway,” I thought as I stepped around the wounded and dodged racing medical personnel. I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was, relatively speaking, of course. There were a lot of burns, very bad ones. The skin would just peel right off of them as the doctors and nurses tried to pick them up and move them. The sound of moaning and screaming filled the air, right along with the smell of burnt flesh and acrid smoke from the fires which surrounded Ford Island.
Most of the injured were covered in fuel oil in addition to the injuries they had sustained. I recognized some of them as being from the crew of my own ship, but instead of trying to talk to them, I decided maybe it was best to stay out of the way.
Still feeling the pain in my head and in my side, I was nonetheless glad to have turned down the doctor’s painkillers and blood transfusions. These men needed them more than I did, and I knew I had made the right choice. Although I was weak, at least I could still walk.
And walk I did, right out the door of the dispensary and onto the lawn to look for the battleship that was underway.
From where I was, I could only catch brief glimpses of the escaping battleship through the smoke of the burning California. I couldn’t tell at first which one it was, but then she came out from behind the smoke of Battleship Row. All anti-aircraft guns were skyward and blazing as Jap plane after Jap plane dove on her, strafing and dropping bombs. It was the Okie’s sister, Nevada, making her run to get free of the hell Pearl Harbor had become. And by the looks of it, she was as determined to make it as the Japs were determined to stop her.
As I stood there, riveted and watching, I realized more guns were shooting back at the planes diving on Nevada than just hers. Every gun in range was firing up at the Japs to defend the Nevada with all of the aggressiveness they could muster. People who could not find guns to shoot back at the Japs were cheering her on as they could between tending the wounded, fighting fires, and running for cover because of the attacking planes. It was as if the whole of Ford Island and Pearl Harbor itself was cheering her on. Everybody wanted that ship to make it.
One of the ships firing her anti-aircraft guns in support of the Nevada was the Califo
rnia. She was paying dearly for it as well. I watched as several bombs dropped from altitude rained down around her, scoring a number of hits. Fires had broken out all over her, and she was sitting low in the water and listing. I remembered she was the other ship that was due for inspection that day and knew the basic material condition X-Ray was not set as the attack began. Keeping her afloat with fires above and flooding below would be difficult at best.
Nevada was smoking badly and down by the bow. The Japs concentrated their attack on her. Then a bomb struck her forward again; then another, and another. And still, she fought on, even as she sank lower into the water. Sadly, she wasn’t going to make it, and it was becoming more obvious to me that if she sank in the channel, she would block up the harbor for months. Even as I was thinking this, she began a turn, and before reaching the south channel, headed for the beach. She was going to ground herself off of Hospital Point. The Japanese had won again as the Nevada had finally succumbed to her wounds and sank into the muddy water.
“Goddamned Japs, I’m going to kill all of them if I get a chance,” I said to myself over and over again, as I sat and watched the battle rage on, frustrated that there was no way for me to participate.
Once again, I was reminded of my wife and son as the Nevada beached herself near where they were. I hoped they were alright as I sat peering through the smoke rising from the beached battleship and tried to find out if the hospital was still even there.
Looking at the heavy smoke that was pouring from the California, I began to get interested in her struggle. I watched as the spot plane was pushed off into the water, obviously to reduce the chance of a gasoline fire on the aft deck.
After a period of time watching the crew of California struggle to keep their ship afloat, I noticed the attack begin to lighten up. Then, all of a sudden, the Japs just disappeared from the sky, almost as quickly as they came, leaving behind them the terrible destruction, along with the unmistakable stench of warfare.
I don’t know what time it was; my watch was full of water from Pearl Harbor and stopped, evidently I left the capsizing Oklahoma at about five after eight.
“Jake, is that you?” I heard a familiar voice behind me as I sat on the small piece of dispensary lawn watching the burning oil from the Okie, West Virginia, and Arizona advancing on California. I turned to see Lieutenant Lewis, black from head to toe with oil and his arm in a sling. “Chuck!” I responded “Glad to see you! You’re looking as well as anybody else here. Are you alright?”
His face was grim at first but brightened when he realized it really was me. It seemed like ages since I’d seen him, and our condition really added to the effect.
“I’ll be alright,” he said. “As the ship rolled over, I was trying to get over the starboard side and slipped and broke my arm. What about you?”
“I hit my head on something in the dark when the fifth torpedo hit the ship and then got hit by a bullet fragment or splinter or something topside. It’s just a nick though, but both needed stitches.”
Then I asked him the hard question, which I’m sure was on both of our minds. “Who made it off of the ship?”
“Well,” he said with a very long pause “Commander Kenworthy and Lieutenant Commander Hobby did, I think, because I met them on deck as they were discussing whether to abandon or not.”
“XO and damage control,” I said. “That’s good. So they did decide to abandon, huh?” I didn’t tell Lewis I had independently decided to abandon ship, but I was relieved to know my own decision was the correct one.
“Yes, sir, they did,” he replied. “They ordered abandonment to starboard by word of mouth, so I ran down the starboard side to my turret to order the crew out. As I looked in, crewmen were already struggling to get out. The ship was rolling pretty hard by then. A flashlight was shining up toward the hatch from down below. Ensign Flaherty was down there using the light to guide the other crew members out.”
“Good, so Flaherty and most of the crew from number three made it,” I said.
“No, sir.” Lewis said. “Flaherty was on the lower deck of the mezzanine. As fast as the ship was rolling at that point, I don’t see any way he could have made it. Some of the other crew who did make it out told me that he just stayed there, holding the flashlight on the exit as the compartment flooded, and guided as many other people as he could out of the turret. There is no chance he made it.”
“Joe Fitzgerald didn’t make it either,” I told him, noting the sudden expression of shock on his face.
“Chief Fitzgerald?”
“Yes.”
“He passed by me on the way out of the turret when I shouted in to tell them to abandon ship,” he said. “What happened?”
Then I told Lewis my part of the story where I had come across Joe and tried to help him get over the side. I decided not to give him the specifics of what happened when he got hit by the twenty-millimeter round. I just told him that he had been shot and died. It was true enough.
After I finished telling my story, we sat silent for a while, watching the California in her struggle to stay afloat (which she eventually lost). She was beginning to be engulfed in burning fuel oil from the other ships when I noticed the crew going over the side in boats wherever they could. At least she was on an even keel. Evidently, they decided to abandon. They had time, whereas we didn’t.
The injured and dead were beginning to really pile up around the dispensary by then, and the helplessness of not being able to do anything about it was really beginning to wear on us. The smell of burning oil and burnt flesh was everywhere, and nothing could be done to escape from it.
Suddenly, across the harbor, the destroyer that was burning in the floating dry dock exploded. The fireball was huge and kind of reminded me of the Arizona explosion earlier. It literally rocked the island again. My attention was once more drawn to Hospital Point, where I last knew my family to be.
“My wife and son are over there,” I said to the Lieutenant as I watched the flaming debris from the ship rain down over Hospital Point.
“I know that, sir.”
“Chuck,” I said after a brief pause “from here to the ends of Hell itself, I swear I am going to kill as many of those slant-eyed bastards as I can.” And with that, the purpose I used to survive the attack grew into the purpose I used to fight a war.
The Day of Infamy
I still remember the first time I heard the “Day of Infamy” speech the president gave to Congress, asking for war. It was almost required listening at the time for anybody not on an immediate life-saving rescue operation. Since I was still on light duty from my injuries sustained the day before, it was easy enough to be near a radio when it happened. News was the big occupier of time for those of us in good enough condition to listen to it, and the medics were willing to provide us with a radio to keep us “less wounded” busy and out of their hair. We were starving for information about what was going on and would stop at nothing to get it.
By then, the big flood of casualties had tapered off quite a bit, but the medical personnel were still going strong on the ones who were there. There was plenty enough misery, pain, and death to go around. The dead were piled up and covered with blankets outside to make room inside for the living who still needed treatment. The sound of patients moaning or occasionally screaming in pain was all around us, which had an emotional, amplifying effect on those of us who were listening to the speech. It’s one thing to listen to that speech in a nice quiet place like home, fifty or sixty years after the fact, but another thing entirely when you are surrounded by the products of the war the president was speaking of.
The room was full of people I didn’t know, as well as some of the other officers and crew of the Oklahoma. But we were all bound by the same experience and the same purpose. We were all in it together and knew it, which gave us a unity in spite of the fact we didn’t personally know each other.
Everybody had a good idea of what was going to happen when the president began to speak. Nobo
dy in the room made a sound. We were as one, bound to the radio, silent and waiting for the words we knew were coming to finally arrive.
Most people these days remember the “A date which will live in infamy” line but know very little else of what he said. Thus, history has decided to title it “The Day of Infamy” speech.
Not that he said a lot in addition to that; he didn’t need to. This was plain. The whole thing was little more than six minutes long. But man, I tell you, he hit this one right out of the park in a way the Babe never could.
The parts which really stood out to us the most were toward the end. “I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the People when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.” There was a loud round of applause from Congress, but we remained silent.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” Applause again from Congress, and we still remained silent.
“With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.” Applause once more from Congress, and some of us began to nod in approval. I began to feel myself smile a little bit in spite of it all.
“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”