Home is the sailor...

imr4198

Button Buck
Duty in the Pacific was a mixture of good and bad. Hawaiian girls, flowered shirts, drinks with pineapple in them, beautiful beaches, palm trees. Send a postcard to your little brother in the states. Having the time of my life, wish you were here. Almost made a sailor forget the hot on board duty. Not too bad all things considered. Life was pretty good on the USS Oklahoma moored alongside the other ships on battleship row in neat double lines. December 7, 1941.
Did Seaman 2nd class Frank Wood know what was happening as the sound of high-performance radial engines broke the sleepy Sunday silence? Red rising suns, meatballs the Navy called them, painted on the wings and fuselages of the first wave of attackers. The USS Arizona turned into a twisted pile of scrap metal and corpses as her forward magazine blew. Other battleships were holed and sunk at berth as water filled the compartments which had their watertight doors open. The outer ships in the line suffered more than the battlewagons anchored near the land. The land protected them from torpedoes on one side; the outboard ships on the other. Nothing protected any of them from the bombs.
Sailors in the water. Living and dead. Dying and drowning. Some blown overboard and some jumpers. Oil spewed from the holed vessels and fire spread across the face of Pearl Harbor. The aerial ‘Long Lance’ torpedoes punched hard into the belly of the Oklahoma and she rolled over. The bottom of the battleship was now the only part above water. Down inside was a world turned upside down.
Thousands of tons of ... everything... suddenly turned the vessel into a trap. Mattresses, mops, munitions. Anything not bolted down came down on the survivors inside the ship. Nobody could tell where anything was anymore. The inside was blacker than any grave.
After the attack was over, work crews cut holes in the bottom of the ship and rescued a few sailors. Then they searched inside and found a few more. Searching more than just a limited space was impossible. Ladders and compartment hatches were blocked or buried or under water. The air was bad. Rescue crews topside could hear the tapping of survivors inside... somewhere. Tap, tap, tap. There was no way to tell where they were. Maybe just under their feet. Might be trapped two decks below tapping on a bed rail with a wrench. The rescued sailors grew fewer and fewer. Some bodies were taken off. The tapping went on for weeks. Tap, tap, tap. I’m here. Come get me. Why don’t I die? Tap, tap, tap.
Eventually in 1944 it was decided that the hulk of the USS Oklahoma was a hazard to navigation and the repair crews welded up holes and pumped in air. Cranes helped turn the ship over and the mud-covered top works of the battleship were once again above water. Now someone could go below and recover what was left of the 400 sailors. The remains came up in bags and buckets and were buried mingled together in 52 different mass graves marked ‘Unknown, but to God.’
Then in 2015, somebody decided to exhume the remains and try to sort out who was who from DNA. That is how S2c Frank Wood came to be shipped back last week to my hometown of Franklin, North Carolina. An Ohio boy, he is now laid to rest where his last living relatives make their home. 76 years after he was entombed in the bowels of a ship in Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941.
IMR4198
 

imr4198

Button Buck
Thanks to all who expressed their appreciation. I was a little apprehensive about posting since I was troubled about someone thinking the post was morbid or gory. It is hard to express the actual morbidity or gore of Pearl Harbor in only 500 words or so. Best wishes to all. IMR4198
 

Tipmoose

Administrator
Staff member
Contributor
Yeah...I never stopped to think that people would be trapped inside the ships for weeks.... Constantly tapping in the dark and waiting for rescue that wasn't coming. I had assumed they all just drowned or burned to death.
 

cuppednlocked

Ten Pointer
If you want to learn more I highly suggest picking up 2 books. They are both very interesting.

One is "Descent into Darkness" the other is "Resurrection: Salvaging the Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor".
 
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