Unti Pearl Harbor Memoir LP: A USS Arizona Sailor’s Extraordinary Memoir of Infamy, Survival, and Heroism at Pearl Harbor

249 Pages·2016·4.05 MB·English

by  Donald Stratton

Dedication
DEDICATED TO
MY WIFE AND CHILDREN,
FIVE GRANDCHILDREN, FIVE GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN,
AND ALL MY SHIPMATES
TO THE ETERNAL MEMORY
OF OUR GALLANT SHIPMATES
IN THE USS ARIZONA
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN ACTION
7 DECEMBER 1941
MAY GOD MAKE HIS FACE
TO SHINE UPON THEM
AND GRANT THEM PEACE
Epigraph
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might
teach us!
But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which
experience gives us
is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves
behind.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: The Awakening
Part One
1 A Child of the Depression
2 To Sea on the Arizona
3 The Last Night
4 December 7th
Part Two
5 The Damage
6 Among Angels
7 America Responds
8 Recovery
9 Home to Red Cloud
Part Three
10 Back in the Fight
11 Endgame
12 The Lessons of Pearl Harbor
13 Remembering the Arizona
14 Preparing for the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary
Epilogue: The Reunion
Writer’s Postscript
Acknowledgments
Corroborating Sources
Index
Photo Section
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The Awakening
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a
terrible resolve.”
—Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Commander of Japan’s Naval Forces
On the afternoon of December 7, 1941, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, reached Washington, D.C. Rumors raced unchecked through the
corridors of power. The Pacific Fleet, destroyed? The island of Oahu, overrun?
Japanese subs, seen off the coast of San Francisco? Japanese troops, mounting
an amphibious landing? Japanese spies, living among us?
Switchboards lit up; teletypes chattered. Presses were stopped, broadcasts
interrupted.
The West Coast, with its large population of Japanese immigrants, panicked.
Schools in California closed. So did businesses. “Extra!” editions of newspapers
sold out as soon as their bundles hit the streets. And suddenly every Japanese-
American living here was looked on with suspicion. Some were shunned. Others
were harassed. And many, before the war’s end, would be displaced, forced to
live in internment camps.
As facts were checked and rumors dispelled, shock gave way to the sobering
reality that America would be going to war—joining a global conflict it had
wanted no part of. From coast to coast, people huddled around their radios,
waiting to hear from their president. His “fireside chats” had gotten them
through the Depression. If ever they needed a word from him, it was now.
The president’s two speechwriters were out of town at the time, and so it
would be his words, and only his, that the nation would hear. On the evening of
December 7, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called his secretary Grace
Tully into his office. “Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow,
and I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.”
By midnight, he had finished. When he awoke the next morning, a typed draft
was waiting for him. He went over the speech and dressed for the day.
At noon on December 8, Congress opened a special joint session with a prayer
by the Senate chaplain, who called for national unity.
About that time, six limousines pulled up to the White House. Roosevelt
walked to the presidential car, silent and somber, pushing his legs, clad in
painful braces hidden under his suit. The door of the Cadillac opened, and he
eased himself in. Outside his car stood six Secret Service agents, three to each
running board, each holstering a .38-caliber revolver. Inside sat four more, with
sawed-off shotguns. Security had been ratcheted up all around the capital, not
just for the president. Tensions were high. Everyone was wary.
Inside the car the president was poring over his speech, weighing every word.
His opening line announced that the previous day would “live in history.” It now
seemed too pale a phrase. He scratched out “history.” He needed something
ruddier, flushed with outrage.
Above it, he printed the perfect word—“infamy.”
At 12:20, the president’s motorcade pulled into the parking lot of the U.S.
Capitol. When the somber procession stopped, Roosevelt emerged from his
limousine, wearing a navy blue cape over his shoulders. His son James was a
captain in the Marine Corps and was wearing his dress blue uniform as he took
his place at his father’s side.
His arm steadied his father as they made their way to the House chamber. The
room was packed with senators, representatives, justices of the Supreme Court,
and members of the president’s cabinet, along with the highest-ranking military
leaders. His wife of thirty-six years, Eleanor Roosevelt, watched from the
upstairs gallery, which was filled to capacity with more than five hundred people
eagerly waiting for the president to speak.
The entire nation was an extension of that audience, gathering around radios.
In Red Cloud, Nebraska, my family collected before a wooden, battery-operated