I thought I would repeat a speech I made at Toast Masters the other night as nearly as I can remember it.  I think it was interesting.  Maybe I didn't....I told you so long ago about these events.  I am not sure whether I told you in this way or whether I had the impression then that I have now.  But this is the way I talked about it.  It is hard to say really.  Memory plays strange tricks people say.  I will tell about it then and so you can hear it.  It may be a different story and it may be the same story.

 

I first placed myself as a Yeoman 3rd class having been in the Navy about a year and a half on the USS California in a long row of battle ships tied up to pilings along side Ford Island.  The ships were not far away from the island.  Only a few yards of water between.  I had gotten up that Sunday morning, eaten breakfast and had just gone out on the quarter deck waiting to make my guard mail trip to the flag ship which was across the bay.  The trip would be by motor whale boat.  And I walked out on the deck and general quarters sounded.  Now by this time we were so conditioned that when general quarters sounded regardless of where it was, I just turned around and ran, which I did.

 

About the time I got to my battle station, which was in the plotting room, the first torpedo hit.  Now the atmosphere in this room was not particularly one of great concern.  No one knew we were under attack.  Now when the torpedo hit, I thought well Gee the Navy is really going all out to make this battle drill realistic.  But this was the feeling I believe.  And then the word was passed down from the top that we were actually being attacked.  Now even then we were not worried.  I wasn't worried.  The reason I wasn't was this.  My battle station.....well two reasons.  The main reason was just because battle ships seemed to be such tremendously massive things that it was almost beyond comprehension to think that a dinky little thing like an airplane could hurt one very much.  And the second thing was because of the location of my battle station.  My battle station was in the main battery plotting room.  Our job had to do with directing the fire of the main batteries.  

 

Of course in an air attack, you do not fire main batteries so we did not have anything to do.  Anyway, the plotting room was located about amid ships.  On each side of the ship at this point extending from above the water line to way down below the plotting room was a 14" armor slab, that is a slab that lay along the side of the ship for to aft and was big and thick and heavy.  Then just above our heads in the plotting room was a 14" armor steel deck and the next deck above that was an 8" armor steel deck.  Also from the plotting room and another room, the name of which I have forgotten, off of these was an armored escape tube up to the conning tower.  It had a ladder in it so you could climb up.  The conning tower is where the ship is conned in battle and presumably if something happened to the people directing the ship during battle that they could be replaced by someone from the plotting room.  So I wasn't worried particularly.  However, other torpedoes struck and one thing, one little device which received an awful lot of attention and which stands out very prominently in my memory was the roll indicator hung on the wall of the plotting room.  All this thing was, was a arrow hung point down pivoted point down at the end which would have feathers on it and a semicircular scale at the bottom which was graduated in degrees.  As the ship rolled this arrow would move over and indicate how many degrees of roll there were.  Well the effect of the torpedoes began to be noticeable by this roll indicator indicating a greater and greater angle.  And then we began to get a little bit worried for fear the ship would go over.  

 

Now the noise and shock of the torpedo explosions had been a lot.  They were heavy explosions.  But yet they weren't something that shook people up too much.  Probably from where we were, it didn't sound any louder than the sound you would get if you were sitting in a range finder station up on top of a gun turret when they fired a main battery salvo.  So they weren't too bad.  But then the bomb hit and that was bad, that was terribly bad.  It exploded on this 8" deck I believe, not very far from just above our heads.  And it just shook things up thoroughly.  Every thing in the plotting room that was movable moved.  Things came crashing off the walls.  The lights went out.  When emergency lights came on later, the lights were swinging wildly.  It was really a startling thing.  This blast was really so sharp and heavy, it was as though each one of us had been slapped on the head with a hammer.  This doesn't describe it.  I can't describe it more than what I have said.  That was a very significant thing, that bomb.  And the thing that was probably the hardest blow of the whole time was when we received word from the top that the Oklahoma had actually capsized.  Boy our hearts dropped then, we just thought that we were dead.  But obviously, we didn't go over.  It wasn't very long after that that the word was passed down for us to abandon ship.  We went over and climbed up the escape tube one by one.  As I got out of the tube and walked across the conning tower and out through the door to the open, there was so much smoke that it was just like night.  And there were fires burning all over the place.  It truly looked like an artists conception of Hell.  But this didn't bother me.  All I could think of is that I am alive.

 

That was the end of my speech at Post Masters.  Several people asked me after that well what happened, how did you get off.  So I think maybe I should describe a little bit more for you.  I believe you will enjoy this and I don't know how much of it you can remember.

 

I walked out into the open and I guess we had gotten the word to abandon.  People were jumping over the side.  We were on fire aft or at least the oil around our stern was on fire.  This was forward up high where I came out.  Lots of people jumped over the side and swam ashore.  I have forgotten some details here.  It was very confusing.  I don't think I had gotten ashore yet.  I think there was a ramp aft that actually led to the shore and I don't remember whether I got to it or not.  But anyway, I may have walked over this ramp.  I know I didn't jump over the side.  We decided that we were then sitting on the bottom and we were not going over.  We came back aboard.  The guns on the top were still being manned.  They were 50 caliber machine guns.  Half of the 5" anti aircraft guns, there were a total of 8 mounts and 4 of these mounts were under water or very near it.  The other 4 were up high and I think they were still being fired.  They must have been because then I went up and reported to the gunnery officer and he sent me and somebody else, I don't remember who, aft to go below and see if we could get into magazines and get some more anti aircraft ammunition.  

 

Well, I went back on the fan tail and started down and I was worried.  I was still very much worried the ship was going over and I was a very reluctant ammunition finder.  I don't remember how far I got down but finally I got to a door which had been blown, lets see, I can't remember, there must have been a torpedoes hit back there and jammed this door.  Either that or we were getting too deep in water.  I can't remember which but any way we couldn't get through and I must admit that I didn't take any tools and try to break the door down.  I think I must have been pretty glad I didn't get through to go further down.  Then I went back to the gunnery officer and told him.  And then they put me to work loading 50 caliber shells.  They have little metal clips that clip the shells all together that make a belt.  Then when the shell is fired it comes out of the clip and the clip goes sailing away.  I worked loading these things, oh, I don't remember how long.  When I got through my hands were just raw from working so frantically.  And then I went aft and I got a job bailing water in a bucket brigade to pour water on the fire.  By this time the fire around the fan tail was out.  I don't know where the other fires were.  The bucket brigade went on into the ship somewhere.  So I bailed water and worked terribly hard.  So I bailed water until I was just exhausted.  I was on the end of the line hanging onto the rail with one hand and resting my feet on the edge of the ship.  The water was so far up there that I could reach down and get buckets of water.  This was a pretty hard task.  I had hemorrhoids after this deal.

 

After that, I guess the fires were out but I got the job of carrying bodies out over the ramp onto the beach.  I had just about had it by this time.  I carried out one fellow who didn't have any legs left and no arms left.  As I walked over the gang plank with him, his head end went down and some white fluid came out of his mouth.  I just couldn't stand it any more.  I quit that.

 

By this time it must have been pretty late.  People had gotten together bedding and they set us up bunks or mattresses or whatever was available to sleep on in the barracks.  We continued to stand gun watches on the 5" guns and the machine guns which were still above water.  Yes, even that first night we were divided into watches because I remember I was on the island that night in a barracks when a lot of shooting began.  I just laid there scared stiff.  I think what had happened was that we shot down 2 or 3 airplanes off of the carrier Enterprise.  Our own.  Oh, incidentally, it was taking your life in your hands to break into a run around that place.  People were terribly trigger happy.  Every once and a while there were bursts of machine gun fire around the place.  I should imagine a lot of cows got killed.  Probably people too.  It was quite an exciting time.  I can remember once jumping under the overhangs of the one of the turrets when a strafing plane came by and bullets making noises on the deck.  I think I can remember now.  As I say, things were so hectic.  There were so many people telling stories for so long after wards that sometimes, I am not quite sure that these things which happened to me really did happen to me.  But most of it I am sure of.  But this business about jumping under an over hang to escape strafing, I think this happened but I can't quite be sure.

 

That was about the end of the day.  The next few days after that we stood our gun watches on the ship on the guns that were still above water.  Eventually we took those guns off the ship and took them over to another part of the island an set them up on the shore for a shore battery.

 

There were numbers of heroic things done that day.  I do remember either seeing or being told about this one boatsman mate who when the air supply that worked the rammers of the 5" guns quit, the guns were pointed up and it was very difficult to load these things.  These shells weighed quite a lot. I suppose they weighed about 75 lbs.  This one boatsman mate was strong enough that where the guns were sitting pointing straight up, this guy was taking shells and just shooting them right up into the breach of the gun.  Loading that way is a real herculean task to do for very long with 75 lbs. or so a lift.  That is about all I can remember.