“0745—Rig for Church”: A Chaplain at Pearl Harbor

by Captain William A. Maguire, Chaplain Corps, U.S. Navy

Published in 1943

The Japanese raid on the fleet at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, was the theme of the last chapter of my book Rig for Church. The official censors were indulgent in permitting me to describe, however sketchily, the highlights of that tragedy. That chapter, called “December Seventh,” told how the Japs surprised us a few minutes before eight o’clock in the morning; how my yeoman Joseph Workman and I saw death fall from the sky although at first we thought it was a sham attack by our own Army planes. The first planes we saw were dive-bombers which dove vertically over the ships moored at 10-10 dock. A diagram of the harbor found on the body of a Japanese aviator which I was permitted to see a few weeks later in the austere privacy of an admiral’s office, proved that the enemy thought the fleet flagship, Pennsylvania, was at her usual berth there. She was actually in dry-dock a quarter of a mile away. A few of their bombs struck the “Pennsy” but caused unimportant damage. The Jap’s picture was so accurate, however, it clearly showed that the raid was an “inside job.”

The Sunday work-sheet of the California carried this item: “0745—Rig for Church.” It implied that I was expected to arrive on board a little after eight o’clock, hear confessions in my office until nine, and then offer Holy Mass on the forecastle.

The staff motor-boat came alongside the Officers’ Club landing at the very moment a squadron of torpedo planes dove out of the sun, pulled out when about thirty feet above the bay, dropped their glistening steel killers in the “middle aisle” and struck the side of the Oklahoma. Not until we spied the red “Rising Sun” insignia on the fuselage of the third plane, did we realize they were Japanese. Had we left the dock a few seconds earlier, our boat would have been in their murderous course. But this thought did not come to me until days later. Standing there with my foot on the gunwale of the boat, I felt stunned and strangely sick. The only words that came were: “God help us—we’re in it.” Overhead, there was a sinister pall of smoke, and the explosions of bombs and torpedoes rent the air. The first torpedo which struck the Oklahoma caused a huge geyser to rise as high as the truck of the foremast. This was a bit too realistic for a sham battle.

The first wave of torpedo-planes carried out their mission. Believing there would be a lull, I ordered the coxswain to make the gangway of a destroyer which was moored to a newly built dock about thirty yards from the club landing. The crew of the boat, although mad as hornets, showed splendid self-control. Indignant and without show of fear, the bluejackets said what they thought of the Jap and his treachery. With clenched fists, they cried, “We’ll make you so-and-sos pay for this.”

The engineer of the boat remembered the details of that trip and our final run across the bay to the California. He made a shipmate gesture of kindness a year later when I was on a speaking tour of the Eastern States. It was on account of a song called, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” Written by Frank Loesser of Hollywood, it was a catchy tune, and the lyric caught on immediately. This was due, perhaps, to the fact that it told of a chaplain at Pearl Harbor who, when the Japs came, ran from his altar, manned a gun and exclaimed, “Praise the Lord, etc., etc. I just got one of those so-and-sos.” For some reason or other, they made me the hero of the song. I may tell more about that later on. Maybe I shall tell how the publishers, radio stations and the “gentlemen of the press” took me over the hurdles. It delighted me to get Dick Smith’s letter. It reached me at the Union League Club in New York. My cousin, John P. Maguire, thoughtfully put me up there, for he probably knew that the publicity I was receiving would make living in a hotel rather difficult. The sailor’s address at that time was: U.S.S.P.C.1192, Consolidated Shipbuilding Co., Morris Heights, New York City. Here is the letter:

Dear Captain:

I see, according to the newspapers, that you may be in hot water on account of that popular song. If I may, Sir, I’m sure I can help you out as I was the engineer of the Bat For Staff duty motor boat. As you remember, we, the boat crew, stayed with you until the attack was over. If you need any help, don’t hesitate to let me know. Good luck.

As ever,

Richard Gordon Smith

Machinist’s Mate second class, USN

A few minutes after we boarded a destroyer, which was then under the command of Commander George Angus Sinclair, another squadron of torpedo-planes swooped down close to our port beam. By this time, our gunners on topside were ready for them. They scored a perfect bull’s-eye on one of the enemy planes. It exploded in mid-air; bits of wreckage covered the water near us. With contempt for the menace of falling shrapnel, the sailors in my charge were all for retrieving the pieces for souvenirs to send to the folks at home.

In my original account of the Jap raid, I omitted, for many reasons, a dramatic incident which took place just prior to my leaving the destroyer. The officer-of-the-deck had told me the ship was soon to get underway. Staying on board would have meant being many days at sea. It was evident that I was needed on board the California, for she had been torpedoed. Men were in need of a priest.

From where I stood on the well-deck, I could see dimly through the smoke many men swimming near the damaged Oklahoma, the West Virginia and the Arizona. Some were climbing on rafts; others were being hauled into motor launches, while still others bobbed like corks in the wind-swept waters. I gave general absolution. Knowing that the Maryland’s motor launch was alongside the destroyer, I requested authority of the officer-of-the-deck to organize a rescue party, using the Maryland’s boat because the high free board of the staff boat would be impracticable for the job. Joe Workman, the faithful watchdog of my Mass kit, at a nod from me, automatically sped down the ladder and transferred the kit to the fifty-footer. At that moment, I spied a motor-boat heading through the smoke toward the landing. I made out the abbreviation “Cal” on the bow. Cupping my hands, I yelled with all my strength, “What are your orders, coxswain?” Faintly came the reply, “To pick up the Admiral, Sir.” I had now to make an important decision—and quickly.

Never had I been hung so securely on the horns of a dilemma, or given so little time to decide what it was best to do. High altitude bombers had just destroyed the great Arizona. A fourteen-inch shell used as an aerial bomb had found her magazines, killing hundreds. Smaller planes were still strafing the ships. I prayed God for guidance and made an estimate of the situation: Vice Admiral William S. Pye, my immediate superior, was second in command of the Fleet. He was needed on board his flagship. As a member of his staff, I naturally felt impelled to pick him up with my boat in case anything happened to the other one. Also, I decided that the Maryland’s coxswain was quite capable of taking his launch to the spot where the swimmers were struggling. With the approval of the officer-of-the-deck, I followed that line of reasoning and said, “Let’s go, gang.” Six lads hopped aboard the staff boat and we “made knots” to the club landing.

During the ensuing days, I found no time to check on the work of the Maryland’s boat but I know the crew must have carried out their mission. On the following Wednesday, I was informed that a Mass kit had been washed up near the ramp of a plane hangar on Ford Island. Apparently the launch had run afoul of burning oil on the water. Some thoughtful sailor had tossed the kit over the side. My favorite purple vestments which the children of Chefoo, China, had made, and the altar linens also, were oil-soaked and ruined. But the chalice, crucifix, altar stone and candle-sticks were intact. They had again survived the vicissitudes of my twenty-five years of Navy service.

Our boat arrived first. The moment we made fast to the landing, I saw Admiral Pye and several members of his staff hurrying down the path. In a jiffy, all that we could carry jumped aboard and we sped “four bells and a jingle” over the white-caps to the California, which was moored at a Ford Island quay. Among those who found places in the after section of the boat was Captain A. E. Smith, Battle Force Operations Officer. He was opposite Admiral Pye, who sat on the starboard side, next to me. Where the Admiral was seated, he could view the wrecked battleships. The Oklahoma had turned completely over. The demolished Arizona was burning fiercely. The Admiral kept leaning over the side to catch a better sight of the debacle, which prompted Captain Smith to warn him of falling shrapnel. Smith probably does not remember that while he knelt on the deck near the Admiral discussing the details of a fleet sortie, he tore his handkerchief into bits and stuffed the pieces into his ears. He knew that the roar from the anti-aircraft guns would not be good for his eardrums. His sensible precautions also gave me an idea: there was cotton in the locker of my room.

Four torpedoes had hit the port side of the California, giving the ship a heavy list. The quarterdeck of teak which was normally as clean and white as snow, was now blackened with soot. It was like a huge stage where a strange pageant was unfolding. The actors followed a studied routine; each actor had been rehearsed in precisely what to do; they had not drilled “around the clock” day-after-day at sea in vain. Before going below to my room, I looked up toward the anti-aircraft batteries. They were firing at some planes.

I found cotton in my room and jammed bits of it into my ears. Then I took off the old raincoat which the duty officer asked me to wear to hide the gold shoulder marks and white uniform. He was in dungarees and rather felt that my immaculate “whites” could readily draw the enemy’s fire. I reached up to a rack on the overhang and pulled down a life-jacket. My gas mask was in my room at the Pacific Club. A bluejacket handed me one when I joined a group of men who were at their battle-stations in the port passageway.

The wardroom deck was covered with men. Most of them had been overcome by poisonous fumes that resulted from the exploding torpedoes. I found several more wounded men lying on the deck of the cabin of the Chief of Staff, Captain Harold C. Train. He was at his battle station on the bridge. The men made a grim tableau lying there in the dark. But there was not a whimper from them. When I spoke to them and asked how they were doing, they smiled and invariably replied, “O.K., Sir.” I heard many confessions and later gave general absolution to the ship’s company.

While attending the wounded in the wardroom there was a foot of water in the officer’s rooms on portside. Now and then I heard and felt an ominous c-r-u-n-c-h and thought the good ship would turn turtle as the Oklahoma had done a little while before. From time to time, believing there might be wounded up there in need of me, I climbed a ladder to the quarterdeck. It was difficult finding a place on the ladder, for a steady stream of men, each carrying a box of ammunition, climbed the steep ladder and then up another one to the guns on the boatdeck. Their faces, under a coat of oil and grease, were impassioned and stern. On reaching topside on one of these trips, I discovered that a ship’s airplane had caught fire. It stood in its cradle aft on the port side. In the din of our roaring anti-aircraft batteries, I managed to attract the attention of the boatswain. He quickly assembled a working party of available sailors. But the ship’s fire main had been destroyed by the torpedo hits. He thereupon ordered the men to push the big plane over the side.

While this “side-show” was being staged, I turned around as though someone had hailed me, and my eyes fell upon a seaman who was crouching beneath the platform of a three-inch sky-gun which was mounted near the starboard gangway. The lad frantically beckoned me to his side and I crouched near him on my knees. He yelled, “Hey, Father, how’s to hear my confession?” He was not scared; an officer had ordered him to seek cover from falling shrapnel, for his gun at that moment was not being manned. The thought came to me then, although I tried to fight it off, “What will my other shipmates think—those passing by carrying ammunition boxes—seeing me on my knees. Will they think that I am pleading with the young sailor, ‘Ease over, son, and give me a break.’ ” I said, “Of course, lad, but make it snappy, I’ve come without my tin hat.” After giving the young fellow absolution, he thanked me and there was a smile on his Irish face. Then with a gleam in his blue eyes, he spat on his hands and exclaimed, “Now bring on them blasted Japs!”

I told that anecdote to Harvey Campbell, Executive Secretary of the Detroit Board of Commerce, in the fall of 1942, having been ordered to Detroit to give the principal Navy Day address. It impressed him. He said, with emotion, that it had not occurred to him till then that a chaplain under fire could give so much to the men with respect to mental freedom and fitness to fight. He visualized that boy spitting on his hands as having nothing on his conscience to worry about; he was certain his receiving the Sacrament had placed him on friendly terms with God. The lad was now free to carry on as a fighter for a sacred cause. Without doubt, this is the highest form of morale. It is fostering morale of this sort that keeps the Navy priest busy hearing confessions and giving Holy Communion to young men on the threshold of death.

This incident, so important in the life of that young bluejacket, exemplified the true mission of the chaplain in battle. In a radio broadcast I gave in New York last November on the Columbia System’s “Church of the Air,” I said, “The chaplain has but one weapon. He does not, he may not, man a gun. His fight is against the powers of darkness; his weapon is gold-embroidered on his sleeve or his shoulder marks. It is the saving cross of Jesus Christ.”

Leaving the wardroom after a visit to the wounded, I heard a young officer sharply give the fateful order, “Abandon ship.” His eyes gleamed. I felt then that there must be real danger of the ship’s capsizing. I felt another c-r-u-n-c-h and a further list to port. Those of us who were free and able to do so, helped the wounded up the ladders to topside. The gallery-deck was ablaze. Ship’s boats were alongside the quay to which the ship was moored and seemed to tug at the leash, aiming to get underway for the trip to the air station dispensary about a quarter of a mile away. The ship’s first lieutenant, Commander Little, suggested that I take charge of one of the boats. It was a motor whaleboat and was about to shove off when I got aboard. Hundreds of men were on the quay and lowering themselves into the water for a swim to the beach. It was our own “little Dunkirk.” The water in the bay was now covered with black, thick oil. Jap planes were still operating over Pearl Harbor, and I felt as I stood in the stern near the coxswain that this was a routine that any Hollywood director would have been proud to handle.

On our return to the ship, we made a path slowly through a great swarm of swimming men. Some in lifejackets waved to us as they leisurely swam past. Others, making headway without artificial aid, yelled, “This is duck soup.” Maybe that was a sly reference to the thick oil on the water. We picked up another load at the quay and sped to the dock near the dispensary. On our third return, we ran into a barrier of burning oil and we discreetly made a left turn and escaped by beaching the boat. I waded through the muck and stood on the shore for a moment trying to figure out what to do next. From there, it appeared to me that all the wounded had been evacuated. A large group of men, who had swum from the ship, stood near me. They were blackened with oil. Some, with slight burns, were in pain. A Marine officer, driving a station wagon, came up and offered to take the wounded to the dispensary. He made several trips, and each time he came to the dock I realized how much I was needed there.

William A. Maguire, Captain (Ch C), USN.

 

Chaplain William A. Maguire, retired captain of the Navy Chaplain Corps., speaker at the Woodland Hills Men's Club meeting held at the Woodland Hills Community Center. Photograph dated January 20, 1950. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection 00134298.