Captain Lacouture, U.S. Navy
Interviewer: Okay. You mentioned you're Assistant Engineer on the USS Blue. You're dealing with a chief and enlisted. How did your leadership skills come into play here?
Lacouture: Well, I found that you had to really trust your chief petty officers to tell you and advise you on all the intricacies of equipment and everything you're working on. And you supported them in any problems they had. I tried to get involved at the level down there with the chiefs and find out what their problems were, and so forth.
Communications Officer was mainly the question of getting the word on what was happening to the captain and responding to his wishes getting whatever he wanted out.
First Lieutenant was mainly keeping the topside cleaned up, and so forth and so on. And Gunnery Officer was making sure your directors and your equipment and everything worked from the gunnery point of view.
And of course, in addition to those deals, you had to stand the deck watch, usually four hours every day, and if you had the midwatch, you'd have been up working until the watch started and then you'd go from then until four o'clock, and fortunately got good coffee to keep yourself awake.
So things progressed well on the Blue, and with my social life, since I met Bam Sperry, I met several other gals. Come the evening before Pearl Harbor, we would moor usually in a joint mooring with three or four other destroyers. We would be on the east side of Ford Island and the battleships would line up on the south side of Ford Island, and then they only had one carrier based at the time there and that was I think the [USS] Enterprise [CV-6] was the main carrier out there at the time.
The night before Pearl Harbor, I was invited to a party with all the top admirals at the Royal Hawaiian, and Hilo Hattie put on her act and did her dancing and sang her songs, and we had a great time.
The mother of a gal that I was with said, "Well, now no need your going back to the ship tonight. Come back and stay at my place. We've got plenty of extra rooms."
So I went out there and about seven o'clock in the morning, she came in and started shaking me. "Wake up, wake up! The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor!"
I said, "Are you crazy? Go away, I'm sleepy." She finally convinced me, so I jumped in my car and headed towards Pearl, and the roads were almost vacant. There were almost no cars on the road, and I go down to the landing, the officers' landing there, and the gig was waiting there for a captain of one of the other destroyers, which was just going out.
I couldn't believe itall the battleships are overturned and all smoking, and all I could think of was all my [Naval Academy] classmates and everything, and what had happened to them. The commander who was captain of one of the other destroyers waiting there, his gig was ready. He said, "Jump in," as the ship came by. It had just gotten underway, and as they went down the channel, the Japanese second attack came in so we started shooting at them and they tried to sink the [USS] Nevada [BB-36], the battleship that had gotten underway.
Interviewer: Nevada had, yes.
Lacouture: And they were trying to sink it in the channel. I guess one of the young ensigns ran it aground to keep it from sinking in the channel. And at the time they were bombing I think it was the [USS] Pennsylvania [BB-38] that was in dry dock there.
And we shot down, oh, at least one of the airplanes, and as we went by, all the planes, the seaplanes and the hangers and everything on Ford Island were burning. Just as we got out to the entrance of the harbor there, we did manage to sink a little Japanese miniature submarine.
So we cruised around out there and I had the watch at about four or four-thirty in the morning, five o'clock just as dawn was breaking, and all of a sudden I see a big shape of a carrier through my goggles, sort of off Barbers Point, and I immediately go to general quarters, man the guns, man the torpedo tubes, get ready to fire torpedoes, and about that time the carrier puts a searchlight up and shows the American flag flying. That was the Enterprise just as I was about to launch torpedoes. It had been delivering planes to Wake Island and on its way home the cruiser with it had had propeller problems. They had to send a diving team down to sort of fix the propeller; otherwise theEnterprise would have been at its dock there and would have been sunk by the Japanese. Because they came in and I think they had, was it the [USS] Utah [AG-16] or some training ship was there and they splintered it to smithereens, just because they were diving at a target location without wondering just what it was.
And then, of course, the Enterprise launched her planes and about a third of them got shot down, because by then our gunners were shooting at anything that moved in the air without identifying it. Nobody knew how to identify airplanes, especially not people who just were bombed unexpectedly.
I think, you know it was strange, for a couple of days before Pearl Harbor we'd been getting submarine contacts out there when we were out there cruising around. Reported them, but nobody paid much attention. And one of the first things we did after, well, as I say we went back in after the attack was over on this ship, and when I was out there, why they transferred me to the Blue, and the Blue had been taken out by four ensigns. A guy out of '39 [Naval Academy class of 1939] was the senior ensign on board and they transferred me over and they'd been up all day and all night. So I brought the ship back in. I was the second senior guy on board then.
Lt. Horace D. Warden, MC (Medical Corps), USN
Excerpt from Oral History of Lt. Horace D. Warden, MC (Medical Corps), USN, Medical Officer Aboard USS Breese (DM-18) on 7 December 1941. [Courtesy of Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery]
Interviewer: You hadn't been trained as a surgeon previously?
Warden: I was actually assigned to Mine Division Two. The USS Breese (DM-18) was one of four destroyers in that division. The doctor I relieved had died so I became the medical officer of Mine Division Two, part of what they called the old "Pineapple Navy." We would go and practice laying mines for 2 weeks and then be in port for 2 weeks. I was riding on the Breese because that was the ship that had a stateroom for the doctor. During the 2 weeks we would be in port I would go to the Naval Hospital to get some more surgical experience.
Interviewer: What kind of sick bay did you have on the Breese?
Warden:We had a small sick bay on those old four-pipers, not much space, just enough for one hospital corpsmen to work in. It was very cramped but adequate.
Interviewer: Were you on the Breese that Sunday morning when the Japanese attacked?
Warden: Yes sir. On that Sunday morning we were moored to a buoy near Pearl City. I happened to be aboard the previous night because in those days they used to divide Pearl Harbor into three areas. There was supposed to be a doctor assigned to each area all night for medical coverage. It was my night to be aboard in Pearl City. I was due to go off duty at 8:00 on Sunday morning. I had changed into civilian clothes and was sitting on the deck for a whaleboat to take me to my car so I could get to breakfast at home on the far side of Honolulu. The Japanese hit at five minutes to eight and I never got off the ship.
Interviewer: Did you see them coming?
Warden: No. The first thing I remember was the sound of firing and then they called general quarters. We were not a large ship so we were not immediately threatened. After the Japanese delivered their bombs on the large ships they had to come up over us. That's when we got one of them with what I think was a 3-inch gun.
Interviewer: Did you see that happen?
Warden: No. I didn't see the plane get hit.
Interviewer: When you went to general quarters, your station was in the sick bay below decks?
Warden: Yes. But I didn't have time to get there. I remember one of our food handlers was milling around very upset and crying, a real basket case. We went to where we had the firearms stashed away and we got a rifle and gave it to him. Once he started shooting he was alright. The plane we had shot down landed right near us in the water. The pilot was still alive so they got a whaleboat to go rescue him. Apparently he made a move, put his hand under his vest or something, and so they killed him and then didn't have a live pilot to question. The sailor who shot him was told that he was going to get court-martialed. But later that all was quashed and there was no court martial.
We then tried to get underway and out of the harbor. Our ship was ready because we had the duty the night before, but we were tied to three other ships and they didn't have many people aboard on Sunday morning. So we had to wait until enough crew members arrived on these ships to get them out of the harbor.
Interviewer: Did you have any casualties to treat at this point?
Warden: None. After about an hour or an hour and a half we were out to sea and started to patrol looking for miniature subs and dropped depth charges. We stayed out about a week and then came back. I can't remember whether we ran out of food or fuel.
Anyway, we came back in to Pearl Harbor. Then we could see all the damage that had been done. Going out we couldn't see it because of where we were. While we were out we kept wondering why the big ships hadn't come out.
Interviewer: What did you think of all that damage?
Warden: It was just terrible. It was one of those things when you think, what's the world coming to? What's going to happen to us now? Everyone was all set to try to get even if we could, but my family was on the other end of Oahu so the first thing I wanted to do was get ashore and let them know that I was okay and find out that they were okay. That was probably the worst week of the war for me.
Interviewer: What did you do once you got back to Pearl?
Warden: We stayed there waiting for further orders. There was nothing really to do. I then got permission to go to the Naval Hospital to help out over there.
Interviewer: Did you still have a lot of casualties to deal with from the attack?
Warden: Yes. We still had surgery to do. One of the Japanese planes had crashed in the Naval Hospital yard and I have a piece of it.
Interviewer: Did you still go patrolling with the Breese?
Warden: Yes. We would go out for a few days patrolling looking for submarines and then come back to Pearl. I remember that on Christmas Day in 1941 we were tied right at Hospital Point, Meanwhile, my family came out to the Naval Hospital to have Christmas dinner with me. That was a wonderful occasion.
Interviewer: How long were you with Mine Division Two?
Warden: I was with that outfit for another year. We got to work laying mines throughout the South Pacific.
Lt. Ruth Erickson, NC (Nurse Corps), USN
Excerpt from Oral History of Lt. Ruth Erickson, NC (Nurse Corps), USN. LT Erickson was a nurse at Naval Hospital Pearl Harbor during the attack on 7 December 1941. [Oral history provided courtesy of Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery]
Erickson: After the maneuvers were over, we were assigned to an R & R (rest and relaxation) port of Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands. After 5 lovely days we followed the fleet, supposedly to New York to assist in the opening of the World's Fair of April 1939.
Upon reaching Norfolk, VA, everything changed. It seemed Japan was "rattling the saber." Thus, all ships were ordered to refuel, take on provisions, and immediately return to the West Coast.
When we reached the Panama Canal, the locks operated around the clock to get the ships through. The Relief (AH-1) was the last ship and we remained on the Pacific side for 2 to 3 days and then continued to our home port, San Pedro, CA.
When we arrived we remained in port until February 1940. In late summer of 1939 we learned that spring fleet maneuvers would be in Hawaii, off the coast of Maui. Further, I would be detached to report to the Naval Hospital, Pearl Harbor, T.H. when maneuvers were completed. The orders were effective on 8 May 1940.
Tropical duty was another segment in my life's adventure! On this same date I reported to the hospital command in which CAPT Reynolds Hayden was the commanding officer. Miss Myrtle Kinsey was the chief of nursing services with a staff of eight nurses. I was also pleased to meet up with Miss Winnie Gibson once again, the operating room supervisor.
We nurses had regular ward assignments and went on duty at 8 a.m. Each had a nice room in the nurses' quarters. We were a bit spoiled; along with iced tea, fresh pineapple was always available.
We were off at noon each day while one nurse covered units until relieved at 3 p.m. In turn, the p.m. nurse was relieved at 10 p.m. The night nurse's hours were 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
One month I'd have a medical ward and the next month rotated to a surgical ward. Again, I didn't have any operating room duties here. The fleet population was relatively young and healthy. We did have quite an outbreak of "cat [catarrhal] fever" with flu-like symptoms. This was the only pressure period we had until the war started.
Interviewer: What was off-duty like?
Erickson: Cars were few and far between, but two nurses had them. Many aviators were attached to Ford Island. Thus, there was dating. We had the tennis courts, swimming at the beach, and picnics. The large hotel at Waikiki was the Royal Hawaiian, where we enjoyed an occasional beautiful evening and dancing under starlit skies to lovely Hawaiian melodies.
Interviewer: And then it all ended rather quickly.
Erickson: Yes, it did. A big drydock in the area was destined to go right through the area where the nurses' quarters stood. We had vacated the nurses' quarters about 1 week prior to the attack. We lived in temporary quarters directly across the street from the hospital, a one-story building in the shape of an E. The permanent nurses' quarters had been stripped and the shell of the building was to be razed in the next few days.
By now, the nursing staff had been increased to 30 and an appropriate number of doctors and corpsmen had been added. The Pacific Fleet had moved their base of operations from San Diego to Pearl Harbor. With this massive expansion, there went our tropical hours! The hospital now operated at full capacity.
Interviewer: Were you and your colleagues beginning to feel that war was coming?
Erickson: No. We didn't know what to think. I had worked the afternoon duty on Saturday, December 6th from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. with Sunday to be my day off.
Two or three of us were sitting in the dining room Sunday morning having a late breakfast and talking over coffee. Suddenly we heard planes roaring overhead and we said, "The `fly boys' are really busy at Ford Island this morning." The island was directly across the channel from the hospital. We didn't think too much about it since the reserves were often there for weekend training. We no sooner got those words out when we started to hear noises that were foreign to us.
I leaped out of my chair and dashed to the nearest window in the corridor. Right then there was a plane flying directly over the top of our quarters, a one-story structure. The rising sun under the wing of the plane denoted the enemy. Had I known the pilot, one could almost see his features around his goggles. He was obviously saving his ammunition for the ships. Just down the row, all the ships were sitting there--the [battleships] California (BB-44), the Arizona (BB-39), the Oklahoma (BB-37), and others.
My heart was racing, the telephone was ringing, the chief nurse, Gertrude Arnest, was saying, "Girls, get into your uniforms at once, This is the real thing!"
I was in my room by that time changing into uniform. It was getting dusky, almost like evening. Smoke was rising from burning ships.
I dashed across the street, through a shrapnel shower, got into the lanai and just stood still for a second as were a couple of doctors. I felt like I were frozen to the ground, but it was only a split second. I ran to the orthopedic dressing room but it was locked. A corpsmen ran to the OD's [Officer-of-the-Day's] desk for the keys. It seemed like an eternity before he returned and the room was opened. We drew water into every container we could find and set up the instrument boiler. Fortunately, we still had electricity and water. Dr. [CDR Clyde W.] Brunson, the chief of medicine was making sick call when the bombing started. When he was finished, he was to play golf...a phrase never to be uttered again.
The first patient came into our dressing room at 8:25 a.m. with a large opening in his abdomen and bleeding profusely. They started an intravenous and transfusion. I can still see the tremor of Dr. Brunson's hand as he picked up the needle. Everyone was terrified. The patient died within the hour.
Then the burned patients streamed in. The USS Nevada (BB-36) had managed some steam and attempted to get out of the channel. They were unable to make it and went aground on Hospital Point right near the hospital. There was heavy oil on the water and the men dived off the ship and swam through these waters to Hospital Point, not too great a distance, but when one is burned... How they ever managed, I'll never know.
The tropical dress at the time was white t-shirts and shorts. The burns began where the pants ended. Bared arms and faces were plentiful.
Personnel retrieved a supply of flit guns from stock. We filled these with tannic acid to spray burned bodies. Then we gave these gravely injured patients sedatives for their intense pain.
Orthopedic patients were eased out of their beds with no time for linen changes as an unending stream of burn patients continued until mid afternoon. A doctor, who several days before had renal surgery and was still convalescing, got out of his bed and began to assist the other doctors.
Interviewer: Do you recall the Japanese plane that was shot down and crashed into the tennis court?
Erickson: Yes, the laboratory was next to the tennis court. The plane sheared off a corner of the laboratory and a number of the laboratory animals, rats and guinea pigs, were destroyed. Dr. Shaver [LTJG John S.], the chief pathologist, was very upset.
About 12 noon the galley personnel came around with sandwiches and cold drinks; we ate on the run. About 2 o'clock the chief nurse was making rounds to check on all the units and arrange relief schedules.
I was relieved around 4 p.m. and went over to the nurses' quarters where everything was intact. I freshened up, had something to eat, and went back on duty at 8 p.m. I was scheduled to report to a surgical unit. By now it was dark and we worked with flashlights. The maintenance people and anyone else who could manage a hammer and nails were putting up black drapes or black paper to seal the crevices against any light that might stream to the outside.
About 10 or 11 o'clock, there were planes overhead. I really hadn't felt frightened until this particular time. My knees were knocking together and the patients were calling, "Nurse, nurse!" The other nurse and I went to them, held their hands a few moments, and then went onto others.
The priest was a very busy man. The noise ended very quickly and the word got around that these were our own planes.
Interviewer: What do you remember when daylight came?
Erickson: I worked until midnight on that ward and then was directed to go down to the basement level in the main hospital building. Here the dependents--the women and children--the families of the doctors and other staff officers were placed for the night. There were ample blankets and pillows. We lay body by body along the walls of the basement. The children were frightened and the adults tense. It was not a very restful night for anyone.
Everyone was relieved to see daylight. At 6 a.m. I returned to the quarters, showered, had breakfast, and reported to a medical ward. There were more burn cases and I spent a week there.
Interviewer: What could you see when you looked over toward Ford Island?
Erickson: I really couldn't see too much from the hospital because of the heavy smoke. Perhaps at a higher level one could have had a better view.
On the evening of 17 December, the chief nurse told me I was being ordered to temporary duty and I was to go to the quarters, pack a bag, and be ready to leave at noon. When I asked where I was going, she said she had no idea. The commanding officer ordered her to obtain three nurses and they were to be in uniform. In that era we had no outdoor uniforms. Thus it would be the regular white ward uniforms.
And so in our ward uniforms, capes, blue felt hats, and blue sweaters, Lauretta Eno, Catherine Richardson, and I waited for a car and driver to pick us up at the quarters. When he arrived and inquired of our destination, we still had no idea! The OD's desk had our priority orders to go to one of the piers in Honolulu. We were to go aboard the SS [steamship] President Coolidge and prepare to receive patients. We calculated supplies for a 10-day period.
We three nurses and a number of corpsmen from the hospital were assigned to the SS Coolidge.
Eight volunteer nurses from the Queens Hospital in Honolulu were attached to the Army transport at the next pier, USAT [U.S. Army transport] Scott, a smaller ship.
The naval hospital brought our supplies the following day, the 18th, and we worked late into the evening. We received our patients from the hospital on the 19th, theCoolidge with 125 patients and the Scott with 55.
Interviewer: Were these the most critically injured patients?
Erickson: The command decided that patients who would need more than 3 months treatment should be transferred. Some were very bad and probably should not have been moved. There were many passengers already aboard the ship, missionaries and countless others who had been picked up in the Orient. Two Navy doctors on the passenger list from the Philippines were placed on temporary duty and they were pleased to be of help.
Catherine Richardson worked 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I had the 4 p.m. to midnight, and Lauretta Eno worked midnight to 8 a.m. Everyone was very apprehensive. The ship traveled without exterior lights but there was ample light inside.
Interviewer: You left at night?
Erickson: Yes, we left in the late afternoon of the 19th. There were 8 or 10 ships in the convoy. It was quite chilly the next day; I later learned that we had gone fairly far north instead of directly across. The rumors were rampant that a submarine was seen out this porthole in some other direction. I never get seasick and enjoy a bit of heavy seas, but this was different! Ventilation was limited by reason of sealed ports and only added to gastric misery. I was squared about very soon.
The night before we got into port, we lost a patient, an older man, perhaps a chief. He had been badly burned, He was losing intravenous fluids faster than they could be replaced. Our destination became San Francisco with 124 patients and one deceased.
We arrived at 8 a.m. on Christmas Day! Two ferries were waiting there for us with cots aboard and ambulances from the naval hospital at Mare Island and nearby civilian hospitals. The Red Cross was a cheerful sight with donuts and coffee.
Our arrival was kept very quiet. Heretofore, all ship's movements were published in the daily paper but since the war had started, this had ceased. I don't recall that other ships in the convoy came in with us except for the Scott. We and the Scott were the only ships to enter the port. The convoy probably slipped away.
The patients were very happy to be home and so were we all. The ambulances went on ahead to Mare Island. By the time we had everyone settled on the two ferries, it was close to noon. We arrived at Mare Island at 4:30 p.m. and helped get the patients into the respective wards.
While at Mare Island, a doctor said to me, "For God's sake, Ruth, what's happened out there? We don't know a thing." He had been on the USS Arizona (BB-39) and was detached only a few months prior to the attack. We stayed in the nurses' quarters that night.
Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Lee Soucy
Excerpt from Oral History of Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Lee Soucy, crewman aboard USS Utah (AG-16) on 7 December 1941. [Oral history provided courtesy of the Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery]
I had just had breakfast and was looking out a porthole in sick bay when someone said, "What the hell are all those planes doing up there on a Sunday? " Someone else said, "It must be those crazy Marines. They'd be the only ones out maneuvering on a Sunday." When I looked up in the sky I saw five or six planes starting their descent. Then when the first bombs dropped on the hangers at Ford Island, I thought, "Those guys are missing us by a mile." Inasmuch as practice bombing was a daily occurrence to us, it was not too unusual for planes to drop bombs, but the time and place were quite out of line. We could not imagine bombing practice in port. It occurred to me and to most of the others that someone had really goofed this time and put live bombs on those planes by mistake.
In any event, even after I saw a huge fireball and cloud of black smoke rise from the hangers on Ford Island and heard explosions, it did not occur to me that these were enemy planes. It was too incredible! Simply beyond imagination! "What a SNAFU," I moaned.
As I watched the explosions on Ford Island in amazement and disbelief, I felt the ship lurch. We didn't know it then, but we were being bombed and torpedoed by planes approaching from the opposite (port) side.
The bugler and bosun's mate were on the fantail ready to raise the colors at 8 o'clock. In a matter of seconds, the bugler sounded "General Quarters." I grabbed my first aid bag and headed for my battle station amidship.
A number of the ship's tremors are vaguely imprinted in my mind, but I remember one jolt quite vividly. As I was running down the passageway toward my battle station, another torpedo or bomb hit and shook the ship severely. I was knocked off balance and through the log room door. I got up a little dazed and immediately darted down the ladder below the armored deck. I forgot my first aid kit.
By then the ship was already listing. There were a few men down below who looked dumbfounded and wondered out loud, "What's going on?" I felt around my shoulder in great alarm. No first aid kit! Being out of uniform is one thing, but being at a battle station without proper equipment is more than embarrassing.
After a minute or two below the armored deck, we heard another bugle call, then the bosun's whistle followed by the boatswain's chant, "Abandon ship...Abandon ship."
We scampered up the ladder. As I raced toward the open side of the deck, an officer stood by a stack of life preservers and tossed the jackets at us as we ran by. When I reached the open deck, the ship was listing precipitously. I thought about the huge amount of ammunition we had on board and that it would surely blow up soon. I wanted to get away from the ship fast, so I discarded my life jacket. I didn't want a Mae West slowing me down.
Another thing that jolted my memory was how rough the beach on Ford Island was. The day previous, I had been part of a fire and rescue party dispatched to fight a small fire on Ford Island. The fire was out by the time we got there but I remember distinctly the rugged beach, so I tied double knots in my shoes whereas just about everyone else kicked their's off.
I was tensely poised for a running dive off the partially exposed hull when the ship lunged again and threw me off balance. I ended up with my bottom sliding across and down the barnacle encrusted bottom of the ship.
When the ship had jolted, I thought we had been hit by another bomb or torpedo, but later it was determined that the mooring lines snapped which caused the 21,000-ton ship to jerk so violently as she keeled over.
Nevertheless, after I bobbed up to the surface of the water to get my bearings, I spotted a motor launch with a coxswain fishing men out of the water with his boot hook. I started to swim toward the launch. After a few strokes, a hail of bullets hit the water a few feet in front of me in line with the launch. As the strafer banked, I noticed the big red insignias on his wing tips. Until then, I really had not known who attacked us. At some point, I had heard someone shout, "Where did those Germans come from?" I quickly decided that a boat full of men would be a more likely strafing target than a lone swimmer, so I changed course and hightailed it for Ford Island.
I reached the beach exhausted and as I tried to catch my breath, another pharmacist's mate, Gordon Sumner, from the Utah, stumbled out of the water. I remember how elated I was to see him. There is no doubt in my mind that bewilderment, if not misery, loves company. I remember I felt guilty that I had not made any effort to recover my first aid kit. Sumner had his wrapped around his shoulders.
While we both tried to get our wind back, a jeep came speeding by and came to a screeching halt. One of the two officers in the vehicle had spotted our Red Cross brassards and hailed us aboard. They took us to a two- or three-story concrete BOQ (bachelor officer's quarters) facing Battleship Row to set up an emergency treatment station for several oil-covered casualties strewn across the concrete floor. Most of them were from the capsized or flaming battleships. It did not take long to exhaust the supplies in Sumner's bag.
A line officer came by to inquire how we were getting along. We told him that we had run out of everything and were in urgent need of bandages and some kind of solvent or alcohol to cleanse wounds. He ordered someone to strip the beds and make rolls of bandages with the sheets. Then he turned to us and said, "Alcohol? Alcohol?," he repeated. "Will whiskey do?"
Before we could mull it over, he took off and in a few minutes he returned and plunked a case of scotch at our feet. Another person who accompanied him had an armful of bottles of a variety of liquors. I am sure denatured alcohol could not have served our purpose better for washing off the sticky oil, as well as providing some antiseptic effect for a variety of wounds and burns.
Despite the confusion, pain, and suffering, there was some gusty humor amidst the pathos and chaos. At one point, an exhausted swimmer, covered with a gooey film of black oil, saw me walking around with a washcloth in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other. He hollered, "Hey Doc, could I have a shot of that medicine?" I handed him the bottle of whichever medicine I had at the time. He took a hefty swig. He had no sooner swallowed the "medicine" then he spewed it out along with black mucoidal globs of oil. He lay back a minute after he stopped vomiting, then said, "Doc, I lost that medicine. How about another dose?"
Perhaps my internal as well as external application of booze was not accepted medical practice, but it sure made me popular with the old salts. Actually, it probably was a good medical procedure if it induced vomiting. Retaining contaminated water and oil in one's stomach was not good for one's health.
I remember another incident. A low flying enemy pilot was strafing toward our concrete haven while I was on my knees trying to determine what to do for a prostrate casualty. Although the sailor, or marine, was in bad shape, he raised his head feebly when he saw the plane approach and shouted, "Open the doors and let the sonafabitch in."
Events which occurred in seconds take minutes to recount. During the lull, regular medical personnel from Ford Island Dispensary arrived with proper supplies and equipment and released Sumner and me so we could rejoin other Utah survivors for reassignment.
When the supplies ran out at our first aid station, I suggested to Sumner that he volunteer to go to the Naval Dispensary for some more. When he returned, he mentioned that he had a close call. A bomb landed in the patio while he was at the dispensary. He didn't mention any injury so I shrugged it off. After all, under the circumstances, what was one bomb more or less. That afternoon, while we were both walking along a lanai (screened porch) at the dispensary, he pointed to a crater in the patio. "That's where the bomb hit I told you about." "Where were you?", I asked. He pointed to a spot not far away. I said, "Come on, if you had been that close, you'd have been killed." To which he replied, "Oh, it didn't go off. I fled the area in a hurry."
Sometime after dark, a squadron of scout planes from the carrier Enterprise (two hundred or so miles out at sea), their fuel nearly depleted, came in for a landing on Ford Island. All hell broke loose and the sky lit up from tracer bullets from numerous antiaircraft guns. As the Enterprise planes approached some understandably trigger-happy gunners opened fire; then all gunners followed suit and shot down all but one of our planes. At least, that's what I was told. Earlier that evening, many of the Utahsurvivors had been taken to the USS Argonne (AP-4), a transport. Gunners manning .50 caliber machine guns on the partially submerged USS California directly across from the Argonne hit the ship while shooting at the planes. A stray, armor-piercing bullet penetrated Argonne's thin bulkhead, went through a Utah survivor's arm, and spent itself in another sailor's heart. He died instantly.
The name Price has been stored in my memory bank for a long time as this fatality but, at a recent reunion of Utah survivors, another ex-shipmate, Gilbert Meyer, insisted that Price was not the one killed. I didn't argue too long because I recalled meeting two men at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital several weeks after the raid who walked around with their own obituaries in their wallets--clippings from hometown newspapers.
