Navy

Eleanor Roosevelt: American Women in the War

Franklin D Roosevelt's better half Eleanor visited the UK in 1942. Here she is having a good old giggle with the girls of Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary. Even during hard times, when butter was scarce and the world was at war, nothing could keep the smile off of Ellie's face.

War Dogs

The Army Quartermaster Corps began the U.S. Armed Forces first war dog training during WWII.  By 1945 they had trained almost 10,000 war dogs for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.   Fifteen War Dog platoons served overseas in World War II.

Galway Kinnell: The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible

 

Read Galway Kinnell's poem, "When the Towers Fell" also here on Voices with background information on his life.

Galway Kinnell: When the Towers Fell

Read more of Galway Kinnell's work (click here for information and purchase)

Lt. Commander Coe and Cary Grant: The Makings of Operation Petticoat

James Wiggins Coe

Alleta Sullivan's Letter to the Bureau of Naval Personnel and President Roosevelt's Reply

Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan with two of their sons

Pearl Harbor: Clark J. Simmons

I came from a family – my mother & four of us…I was the only boy. I had three sisters, and I was the oldest. My father was killed at a very young age, and so I thought…by joining the navy I’d be able to help my family…

Well, I really didn’t understand the depths of the segregation that went on in the navy...when I first went in. In training there were World War I stewards and cooks who were our instructors…and they instructed us as to what our duties would be once we got aboard ship or in the station…and they instructed us (as to) what it would be to work with officers-or work for officers – rather than with them. And it was a very intimate situation between the officers and the steward mates of the mess attendants at that time, because you took care of all of their personal needs: their shoes, their bedding, their laundry. You made sure of their food and, and all of those things. And you knew everything there was to know after a while…

[When you joined the navy] there was only one branch…open to you, and that was serving the officers. You…started off as a mess attendant, and if you were fortunate, you worked up to be a steward, or a cook, officers’ steward or officers’ cook…

Well, we went through the training and…they outlined that our job was essential, because if the officers were happy, then the rest of the crew were happy. So…it was just a job…and as odd as it may seem, it was a lot of white sailors who would have loved to have been able to…serve in that capacity.

I had been aboard the Utah a little better than 2 years…and...we used to run a 6-week cycle of training. We drew personnel from the fleet and trained them in gunnery, flag control…

We also were a mobile target, and there were planes that would do night bombing on us and daylight bombing…and bombs would physically drop on the ship. And once that 6-week cycle was over, we would come into port, discharge those men back to their ship, replenish the ship, repair it for all the damages that was done during the bombing, and we’d start a new class.

(The weekend of December 7)…we had just finished the 6-week cycle. We came in early afternoon on Friday, and we went into what we call Fox 11, which is on the west side of Ford Island. The Lexington, the carrier Lexington, had moved out that morning and we moved into the berth where they were originally. So apparently when the, the reconnaissance plane for the Japanese had taken that picture that Saturday, they had penned in carriers…on the west side of Ford Island, which was the Lexington.

So…that Friday, I had gone out from the ship, tied up…gone to the beach to Honolulu, did some shopping for the officers, shopping for myself, came back; and Saturday morning I did the same thing and then came back and then went back on the beach for that Saturday evening. We had what we called Cinderella Liberty, which meant that we had to be aboard ship by 12:00 that night. So I came in about 11:30…and went to sleep.

That morning…a black man who was on duty came down…and said that something was happening and we were under attack. And he thought the ship in front of us had blew up. But what really had happened was the Japanese had made a run on us, and the first torpedo that they had sent into the Utah had gone through the bulkhead and ran up onto the beach.

And when this young man came down…there were several of us in the compartment. I looked out …on the port side, toward Pearl City…and as I looked out the port, I saw a plane making a run on the Utah. And as she dropped her, the torpedo, the wing dipped and then straightened up, and the torpedo headed for the Utah. And another one right behind it did the same thing.

And as it hit the ship we felt the jar, but the torpedoes did not explode. They went right into the hull of the ship and let water in. And at that time the bugler sound – man your battle stations, which our battle station was below deck. [We] went down, and there was water coming through the ship. It was knee deep.

When I first went down to what they call a battle station, we all were frightened. We didn’t know what was going on. But we knew the ship was taking water in and there was no way to close the water tight doors...it was just a matter of time before the ship was going to sink. And actually it took 8 minutes… (in) 8 minutes the ship was history...

The next command was abandon ship… And...the engineer officer, the communications officer, and my self, we hit the captain’s cabin about the same time. And luckily, they had…3 ports…about 18 inches in diameter. And just by design, each one of us picked one of the port holes. And fortunate thing was that neither one of us-I don’t’ know, just a sixth sense- we did not put the life jackets on…And so we just threw them on the deck in the cabin, and at that time the furniture was beginning to break loose. So we went through the ports... And there’s a walkway outside of the…captain’s cabin, and we got to that.

  


  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we got to the rail of the ship…And as we did that, the lines were beginning to part because the ship was listing to the port, that by then was 40-45 degree list. She was turning over, and as we got to this walkway and went to the railing, the lines were beginning to part and snap back into the ship. And we just went over the side into the water and (swam) for Ford Island, where the rest of our crew who had gotten off ...from other parts of the ship were at that time.

…it’s just as vivid in my mind today as it was that day…I was hit either in the water or as I got on the beach. I don’t know whether it’s shrapnel or a gun wound. I was hit in the head, the shoulder and the leg. And one of the corpsmen, which is like a nurse aboard the ship, he noticed I was bleeding and...he began to patch me up a little. And he said, “We better get you to the hospital.” So I went to the 1st aid station on Ford Island and from there they transferred me to the submarine base hospital.

I think my worst moment was when I woke up in the hospital and I listened to the radio and they were saying what had really happened here. That was my first realization as to what impact that day had really meant. I knew that I had been hurt but I didn’t’ realize, you know, what had happened to the rest of the fleet and the rest of the people. I didn’t realize the ship was completely lost. I saw it turn over…it all hadn’t sank…in until that Wednesday.

Dorie Miller and I were classmates in swimming in Norfolk, Virginia. And this was a big gentleman. He was a huge man, about 6’2”, 225 - 235 pounds - but the nicest guy that you ever want to meet. And we socialized a lot, even in Honolulu when I’d run across him on the beach and we would still…talk…

Dorie Miller was a mess attendant and he went to the West Virginia, and he left Norfolk before I did. I stayed back in Norfolk for a while, and he came out and was assigned to West Virginia.

[The Japanese] wanted to put the battleships out of commission. And when the West Virginia was hit, the captain and the…executive officer…were on the bridge….Dorie Miller went up and physically picked up the captain and brought him down to a first aid station, and then he went back and manned a 50-caliber machine gun which he had not been trained on…

This was a very courageous young man, and it’s always believed that he should have gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor, although he got the Navy Cross….

He exemplified a hero…in what he did that day. Dorie Miller got the Navy Cross, and he was the first black during World War II to get that… he didn’t [get] the Congressional Medal because he was black. And…the navy, being what it was at that time, didn’t want to set that kind of a standard.


Source: Excerpted from interviews taken for the National Geographic program, Pearl Harbor: Legacy of Attack, on the National Geographic Channel; http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent?file=clark_simmons01

 

Pearl Harbor: John W. Finn, Congressional Medal of Honor

    

On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes bombed the American battleships in Hawaii, plunging the nation into World War II, numerous acts of valor played out. Most of them took place aboard the stricken ships — in some cases efforts by the wounded and the dying to save their fellow sailors. Amid the death and destruction, Chief Finn, on an airfield runway, was waging a war of his own against the Japanese.

A few minutes before 8 o’clock, Japanese planes attacked the Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station, about 12 miles from Battleship Row at Ford Island, hoping to knock out three dozen Navy aircraft before they could get aloft.

Mr. Finn, the chief petty officer in charge of munitions at the naval station and a veteran of 15 years in the Navy, was in bed in a nearby apartment with his wife, Alice. He heard the sound of aircraft, saw one plane flash past his window, then another, and he heard machine guns.

He dressed hurriedly, and drove to the naval station. At first, he observed the base’s 20 miles-per-hour speed limit. But then, “I heard a plane come roaring in from astern of me,” he recalled decades later in an interview with Larry Smith for “Beyond Glory,” an oral history of Medal of Honor recipients.

Chief John W Finn, with his wife Alice, at
the 1942 ceremony for receiving the
Congressional Medal of Honor

“As I glanced up, the guy made a wing-over, and I saw that big old red meatball, the rising sun insignia, on the underside of the wing. Well, I threw it into second and it’s a wonder I didn’t run over every sailor in the air station.”

When Chief Finn arrived at the hangars, many of the planes had already been hit. He recalled that he grabbed a .30-caliber machine gun on a makeshift tripod, carried it to an exposed area near a runway and began firing. For the next two and a half hours, he blazed away, although peppered by shrapnel as the Japanese planes strafed the runways with cannon fire.

As he remembered it: “I got shot in the left arm and shot in the left foot, broke the bone. I had shrapnel blows in my chest and belly and right elbow and right thumb. Some were just scratches. My scalp got cut, and everybody thought I was dying: Oh, Christ, the old chief had the top of his head knocked off! I had 28, 29 holes in me that were bleeding. I was walking around on one heel. I was barefooted on that coral dust. My left arm didn’t work. It was just a big ball hanging down.”

Chief Finn thought he had hit at least one plane, but he did not know whether he had brought it down. When the attack ended, he received first aid, then returned to await a possible second attack. He was hospitalized the following afternoon.

On Sept. 15, 1942, Chief Finn received the Medal of Honor from Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, in a ceremony aboard the carrier Enterprise at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nimitz cited Chief Finn for his “magnificent courage in the face of almost certain death.”

John William Finn was born on July 23, 1909, in Los Angeles County, the son of a plumber. He dropped out of school to join the Navy at age 17.

He served stateside after he recovered from his Pearl Harbor wounds, became a lieutenant in 1944 and remained in military service after the war. He had been living on a cattle ranch in Pine Valley, Calif., about 45 miles east of San Diego, before entering the nursing home where he died.

His survivors include a son, Joseph. His wife died in 1998.

Ten of the 15 servicemen who received the Medal of Honor for their actions at Pearl Harbor died in the attack. Among them were Rear Adm. Isaac C. Kidd, commander of Battleship Division 1, who was aboard the Arizona when it blew up and sank; Capt. Franklin Van Valkenburgh, commander of the Arizona; and Capt. Mervyn S. Bennion, commander of the battleship West Virginia.

Four of the Pearl Harbor medal recipients survived the war. Cmdr. Cassin Young, awarded the medal for reboarding and saving his repair ship, the Vestal, after being blown into the water, died in November 1942 in the battle for Guadalcanal.

In 1999, Mr. Finn was among Pearl Harbor veterans invited to Hawaii for the premiere of the Hollywood movie “Pearl Harbor.” “It was a damned good movie,” he told The Boston Herald in 2001. “It’s helped educate people who didn’t know about Pearl Harbor and what happened there.”

“I liked it especially,” he said, “because I got to kiss all those pretty little movie actresses.

John W. Finn died May 26, 2010 at a nursing home in Chula Vista, CA.  He was 100 and had been the oldest living recipient of the medal of honor, the nation’s highest award for valor.

 Source: New York Times, Richard Goldstein, May 27, 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28finn.html