Playback Series

Pearl Harbor: Herb Weatherwax

Herb Weatherwax was born in Honolulu, Hawai'i on June 3, 1917. He was drafted into the United States Army on June 6, 1941. After basic training, he was assigned to the 298th Infantry Regiment located at Schofield Barracks, O'ahu, Hawai'i. On December 7, 1941, Private Weatherwax was on a weekend pass when he heard an announcement over a local radio station that Pearl Harbor was under attack by Japanese forces. The announcement instructed that all military personnel should immediately report to their duty stations. On his way to Schofield Barracks, he witnessed the destruction at Pearl Harbor and Wheeler Army Airfied near Schofield. In 1944, Herb left Hawai'i for training in the Signal Corps. He was reassigned to the 272nd Infantry Regiment, 69th Division, stationed at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. The 69th Division was sent to Europe, and in early 1945, entered combat at the Eifel Forest in Belgium. From there, his regiment moved inland to join up with Russian troops at a town called Torgau, which was located on the west bank of the Elbe River in western Germany. When the two Allied armies linked up, there was a sense of joy among them, knowing at the end of the war in Europe was near. Herb joined the National Park Service volunteer program in 1996. He enjoys haring his war stories with many of the USS Arizona Memorial visitors. Herb has been active in the Pearl Harbor interview series, part of the Witness to History Teleconference Educational Program. The series allows American school children from all across the country to learn about the Pearl Harbor attack by communicating directly with the survivors of the attack.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov: Not On My Watch

The Enemy Who Saved the World

contributed by Barbara Kaufmann

 

The nightly mantra went something like this: “When they do come and I get vaporized, I hope I don’t feel it. If there is no hope and nothing left, then please God, take me and everyone else straight to Heaven.”The end was only and always, one millisecond away. I was deathly afraid of Russians, the word “Communist” brought shivers while the image of St. Basil’s Cathedral resurrected terror from the heart and bile from the stomach. No one in my generation expected to live past thirty.

If by some miracle I were to live, I vowed: “when I am a grown up, I will do something” because none of the adults were doing anything, and I couldn’t understand how they could let this madness go on. They spoke of the only viable retaliatory military option: “mutually assured destruction.” MAD. Mad? Viable? Not until I was an adult myself and decades into the peace movement as an activist, and in the Sister Cities program with Russians, did I learn just how close we came to doomsday. And ironically, it would be a Russian who would save us.

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov  (Станислав Евграфович Петров) born 1939, and now a retired Lieutenant Colonel  from the Soviet Air Defense Forces, on September 26, 1983, suspended the madness and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Petrov was on watch stationed in the Serpukhov-15 secret location near Moscow within the early warning system bunker code-named Oko. The newly inaugurated system signaled the launch of a U.S. Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile which was used for one purpose only—to launch a first strike or immediate counterstrike in case of nuclear alert or launch from an enemy.  The Soviet Molnyia, vast elliptical orbiting satellites, were supposed to decrease the likelihood of natural phenomena being mistaken for a launch.  However during that midnight Autumn Equinox in 1983, the sun’s reflection on high altitude clouds against the darkness of space mimicked the launch of first one, then later several, U.S. missiles on a trajectory toward the Soviet Union.

It was a particularly volatile time because just three weeks before this incident, the Soviet Air Force had shot down Korean Air Flight 007 with 269 people on board including United States Congressman Larry McDonald and several other Americans. President Reagan had implemented Able Archer 83 Defense System which the Soviets interpreted as an American first strike nuclear plan and policy. Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov was utterly convinced that the American government was planning an all out first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union and in anticipation, had implemented a LAW- launch at warning order instead of the usual required confirmation of actual attack. The confirmation would mean that Petrov notify his superiors only after noting the actual radar presence of missiles on the horizon of Soviet Air Space. Waiting for the radar to confirm an actual launch would mean loss of strategic retaliation advantage since waiting for that close range confirmation would lose valuable time for an effective retaliatory launch. Confirmation had been scrapped for the launch at warning dictum.

The LAW in MAD or Launch on Warning in a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario was a dangerous doomsday moment in the world’s close encounter of the third kind—a near third world war. Petrov’s orders were to alert the chain of command to any launch warning. He delayed. His logical reasoning intervened when he considered that a first strike by the U.S. would likely mean the launch of hundreds of missiles simultaneously, not just the few seen on his screen. He speculated, accurately so, that there was a computer error. The MAD doomsday before his very eyes was a reflective illusion.

While the Soviet government assured the world later that one man could not have made a unilateral decision to launch an all-out nuclear war, the climate at that moment most likely would have meant a “go” launch by superiors in immediate retaliation to any reported launch alert. Tensions were measured high and distrust was astronomical in those hot days of the cold war. Hasty and uncalculated actions at that moment in history might have meant the end to life as we know it on this planet.

Accounts vary as to what happened to Petrov as a result of his actions. He was, of course, grilled hard and incessantly by his superiors in an interrogation rivaled only by the KGB, FBI or CIA. He was both praised for his actions and reprimanded for not entering the incident properly in the military diary. He was not rewarded. In fact, had he been publicly recognized and applauded, his superiors would be embarrassed and the scientists behind the program would have been humiliated. For his efforts, he was assigned to a less sensitive post. He took early retirement and suffered a “nervous breakdown.” Analysts speculate that in the hair trigger paranoid climate of that incident, had Petrov reported a missile launch up the chain of command, the superiors with only moments to make a decision would likely have decided to launch. Petrov’s hesitation may have stayed an execution— of all life.

Stanilav Petrov was invited to the United Nations in New York City in May of 2004 where the Association of World Citizens presented him with an award and a trophy for his heroic action or in this case, inaction. The same day the Russian Permanent Mission Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war because of the failsafe procedures within government military protocols. However, Petrov’s role was crucial in making any kind of decision while he says he was just “doing his job.” CBS’s Walter Cronkite conducted an interview with Lt. Colonel Petrov and a documentary has been made of the incident that has yet to be broadcast. 

All those Cold War years, the frightening 007 movie From Russia with Love, the radioactive symbols, the constant nuclear drills in schools, the eerie and piercing air raid sirens, the underground bunkers and fallout shelters, and the terror that lived in the children of a whole generation—was because of the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation by the Russians. Yet when the definitive moment came, it was a Russian who said to the death of the world and life as we know it: “Not on my watch;” and became the Soviet enemy and man who saved the world.

©2010 by Rev. B. Kaufman—peacemaker, award winning author, activist, artist, poet and freelance writer who tells humanitarian story and “writes… to simply change the world.” More of her work may be found at www.onewordsmith.com


History Channel excerpt: The story of how nuclear apocalypse was narrowly avoided in 1983 by the actions of one man.  


Perlasca: Resources

Deaglio, Erico. The Banality Of Goodness: The Story of Giorgio Perlasca (University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).

In a strange twist of circumstances, the Italian Giorgio Perlasca found himself stranded in Nazi-overrun Budapest near the end of World War II and made his way to the Spanish embassy for safety after the collapse of diplomatic relations between Italy and Germany. Using Spanish connections, Giorgio was rechristened Jorge, and, safe for the time being in the Spanish embassy, went to work for the Spanish ambassador. Part of his work was to visit the Spanish safe houses that harbored Hungarian Jews under threat of deportation.

In a story reminiscent of Schindler's List, Perlasca's diary details his heroic efforts to protect these Jews at risk of his life. When diplomatic ties between Spain and Hungary became strained, the Spanish ambassador departed for home, making an offer of escape to his Italian staff member. Perlasca, making the rounds of the safe houses, decided he could not leave the Hungarian Jews unprotected. From that point, Perlasca, "the great impostor," bluffed and blustered his way into recognition as a Spanish diplomat by the Hungarian government, then sparred with German soldiers over one Jewish life after another. In a particularly chilling moment, Perlasca recounts grabbing twin boys in line to be deported at the train station, pushing them into the Spanish embassy car, and then fighting with a German major and a colonel over his right to protect them. The colonel, relenting, turned to Perlasca and said, "You keep them. Their time will come." Moments later the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg informed him that he'd just won an argument with Adolf Eichmann.

 

LLC Publishers.  Italian Righteous Among the Nation (LLC Publishing, 2010).

Individual chapters on: Francesco Repetto, Guelfo Zamboni, Giorgio Perlasca, Pietro Palazzini, Carlo Angela, Raimondo Viale, Rufino Niccacci, Giovanni Palatucci, Vincenzo Fagiolo, Angelo Rotta,and Lorenzo Perrone.



Paldiel, Mordecai. Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the "Final Solution" (Schreiber Publishing, 2000).

According to an old Jewish legend, in every generation there is a handful of righteous persons thanks to whom the world endures. During the Holocaust, there was such a handful in Europe and around the world. Working mostly alone while putting their life at risk and defying their own society and their higher-ups, they saved many lives, and have been recognized as "Righteous Gentiles."

In story after amazing story, the author, who directs the "Righteous Gentiles Program" at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, paints a picture of great pain and suffering, but also of great courage and nobility of good people who serve as a model of human behavior and give us hope for the future.

 

Perlasca: A Righteous Man

Giorgio Perlasca at Yad Vasgem ceremony in his honor

Discovered a Righteous Man

When Perlasca returned home, he found that few people were interested in his experiences; no one believed his stories. Like most European nations, Italy did not want to acknowledge or be reminded of its responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. For the next 43 years, Perlasca's heroic exploits went unheard, and they - and he - were forgotten.

Then in 1987, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Museum in Jerusalem, received a letter from Dr. Eveline Blitstein Willinger, a woman living in Berlin. She and a group of Jewish survivors had located the now 79-year-old man living with his wife in an apartment in Padua, Italy. As noted in Saving the Jews, she wrote, "To my astonishment, nobody knows his name, nobody thanks him for what he did . . . We are asking you to honor this great man with a noble soul, before it's too late."

Honors and Tributes

Once Giorgio Perlasca's story came to light, people from all corners of the world were speaking his name. Between 1989 and 1992, heads of state, associations, and citizens from several countries honored Perlasca for his courageous and selfless work, for the 5,000 lives he saved - and their children and grandchildren.

In 1989, Israel awarded Perlasca an honorary citizenship, and Yad Vashem presented him with the Righteous Among the Nations of the World award. According to the Giorgio Perlasca website, the Jerusalem museum defines "the righteous" as those men and women "who have identified evil and have risked their own lives to save others threatened by a totalitarian, political, social or religious project."

That same year, Hungary awarded Perlasca the Star of Merit, its highest honor. In 1990, Perlasca attended a ceremony in Washington, D.C., to receive the Medal of Remembrance, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council's highest honor. Perlasca also received distinctive awards from Italy and Spain.

The early 1990s saw the emergence of books, films, and newspaper and magazine articles that paid tribute to Perlasca. Enrico Deaglio wrote about Perlasca's activities in La Banalità del bene (The Banality of Goodness, translated into English by Gregory Conti). Mordecai Paldiel included a chapter on Perlasca in Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the "Final Solution." Perlasca told his own story in his memoirs,L'Impostore (The Impostor). Many people learned about Perlasca's exploits from the Italian film, Perlasca - an Italian Hero, and a four-hour French documentary, Tzedek  (Righteousness).

During these years, Perlasca was asked the same question, over and over - why did he risk his life to save Jews in another country? A modest man, he always replied that he didn't think he was a hero and would explain, "Because I couldn't stand the sight of people being branded like animals . . . I couldn't stand seeing children being killed. I did what I had to do ...AsfarasIwas concerned, I was sure of the rightness of what I was doing."

Perlasca died on August 15, 1992, at his home in Padua, Italy.

Source: Answers.com: http://www.answers.com/topic/giorgio-perlasca

 

Perlasca: Saving the Jews

True Heroism

One of Perlasca's most vivid memories was the time he was standing by the loading dock, watching German soldiers and Hungarian police push long lines of men, women, and children toward freight cars waiting to deliver them to the death camps. As described by Commonweal, "Suddenly [Perlasca] rushes forward, grabs two young boys by the collar, drags them back down the platform, and throws them into the back seat of his car." At that point, a German soldier ran over, pulled out his revolver, and motioned to the man to return the boys. Perlasca refused, shouting. "'This car is foreign territory. The boys are under Spanish jurisdiction and you'll be violating international law if you so much as touch them.' The two men begin to scuffle," Commonweal continued, "and a German lieutenant colonel comes over to investigate. He tells the soldier to leave the man and the boys alone. 'Go ahead and take them,' he says to [Perlasca] . . . 'Their time will come."'

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during the war, had been watching this dispute. He walked up to Perlasca and told him the colonel was none other than Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the "Final Solution" and responsible for the murder of millions of Jews in the death camps of Europe during the war.

Budapest was now caught up in "a desperate tug of war," noted a U.S. News & World Report article, "with Eichmann on one end and Perlasca and the diplomatic representatives of four other neutral states - Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Vatican - on the other. '[Wallenberg] and I would go to the train station and bluff until we got Jews away by claiming they were our nationals,"' recalled Perlasca.

The city collapsed into chaos as the Soviet army advanced. Saving the Jews noted that groups of the Arrow Cross militia, frustrated and angered by the Russian shelling of their city, "wildly roamed the streets . . . [exacting] vengeance on countless Jews, whom they indiscriminately shot and dumped their bodies in the Danube river."

The Washington Post recounted an incident that took place in December, 1944. One morning, following a night filled with screaming and gunfire, a young survivor was handed over to Perlasca's care - "a Jewish girl naked except for an army overcoat." She told him that the Nazis had tied the Jews together, in pairs, with barbed wire, and forced them to walk naked through the snow from the ghetto to the Danube. The German soldiers made the Jews kneel at the edge of the river and began to shoot them. By chance, the barbed wire tying the girl to her sister had come loose. Realizing they had a chance to escape, the sisters agreed that they would fall into the river when the first shots rang out. "Somehow, [one sister] swam to a bridge, climbed out, and hid under a tree, where she was found by a member of the Hungarian military, who covered her and handed her over to Perlasca, a known protector of Jews."

In Saving the Jews, one Jewish survivor, Edith Weiss, recalled Perlasca's amazing influence and presence. As Weiss' group was being led to the Danube, ". . . suddenly Perlasca appeared on the scene. 'He was mesmerizing. In this forceful, powerful way of his, he told them to go away and leave us alone . . . Perlasca had such authority, he was so strong, that there was no way anyone could contradict him. They simply went away."'

In January, 1945, as Perlasca was making his final rounds to the safe-houses, the Toronto Star reported that he told the Jews, "The Russians are in the city. You don't have to be afraid. You don't need me any more."

In April, as Perlasca was preparing to leave Hungary for the long journey back to Italy, noted the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous website, he was handed a letter from Dr. Hugo Dukesz, one of the Jews saved by Perlasca, who wrote, "On this occasion we want to express the affection and gratitude of the several thousand Jews who survived, thanks to your protection. There are not enough words to praise the tenderness with which you fed us and with which you cared for the old and the sick among us. You encouraged us when we were close to despair, and your name will never be omitted from our prayers. May the Almighty grant you your reward."

Source: Answer.com" http://www.answers.com/topic/giorgio-perlasca

 

Giorgio Perlasca

 

In the final years of World War II, Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca (1910 - 1992) risked his life by posing as a Spanish diplomat in order to save more than 5,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Perlasca, a non-Jew, has been honored for his heroism, courage, and compassion by several nations, including Israel, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the United States.

Perlasca's story was suggested by our Italian Voices member Isabella Bresci.

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: Joseph L. Lockard

On Dec. 7, 1941, Pvt. Joseph L. Lockard, a 19-year-old from Williamsport, was one of two soldiers manning the brand-new radar station at a hilltop at Opana Point on the northern tip of Oahu. 

Radar technology was so new that many in the military command in the region knew little, if anything, about it. To save manpower, the units were manned only four hours per day, and were shut down by 7 a.m. 

Lockard, now 87, said he left the unit on after 7 a.m. to allow Pvt. George Elliott some practice. On the screen, where normally an approaching aircraft or two would make a small blip, something was popping up that sent the shimmering light all the way to the top of the glass. "I had never seen anything like that. But that's not unusual, because I never had 180 planes coming at me before," Lockard said. 

It was the first wave of what would turn out to be 360 Japanese aircraft, and the beginning of an attack on Pearl Harbor that would bring America into World War II. More than 2,400 U.S. servicemen were killed in the attack, roughly half of those dying aboard the battleship USS Arizona. In all, 18 U.S. ships were sunk or heavily damaged. 

The Japanese planes were first detected 137 miles out, near the outer limit of the 150-mile limit at Lockard's radar station. 

Lockard called in a warning, but his immediate supervisor was not answering. He called his unit's administrative office, finally reaching a lieutenant. The lieutenant told him not to worry. It was probably a flight of B-17 Flying Fortresses due in that morning from California. 

At about 7:45 a.m., Lockard turned off the radar because the truck that was to take them back to their camp had arrived. About 10 minutes later, the first bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor. "We were facing the harbor on the way down, and we could see the big billows of black smoke and knew something had happened," he said.

Lockard eventually became a key witness in panels convened by the military and Congress investigating the attack at Pearl Harbor. He would later be appointed to officer candidate school and earn the Distinguished Service Medal. 

He said he is not angry that his warning of the aircraft went unheeded. "If anything, it made me sad," he said. 

Lockard figures his part in the events of that "Day of Infamy" comes out to a "what-if" footnote for the history books. "What if it hadn't been a Sunday? What if the Jap planes had left their ships 15 minutes earlier? What if they had taken our warning seriously? They couldn't have gotten the ships out of the harbor, but maybe they could have had the bigger anti-aircraft guns manned and kept the bombers at more of a distance," he said. 

Source: Defence Forum of India: http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/showthread.php?t=7282&page=1

 

Pearl Harbor: Walter Staff

A Utah survivor trapped underwater for 2 days.

By Bart Anderson 

One of the most remarkable survival stories of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, is that of Walter Staff. Born in Magna, Utah, he grew up in Salt Lake City where he attended South High School before joining the Navy in February 1940. He was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma in the summer of that year. On Friday night, December 5, 1941, the Oklahoma returned to Pearl Harbor from maneuvers in the Pacific . Part of the crew was given shore leave, and those who remained on board looked forward to weekend of light duty. 

Walter was among those on board the battleship when it was attacked and sunk . He remained trapped in the submerged battleship for two days until rescue crew were able to set him and a companion free . He was one of 32 sailors to be rescued from the Oklahoma, which lost 450 of its 1,300-member crew during the attack. 

Interviewed nearly 50 years later, the ordeal remained vivid in Walter Staff's mind: "I had been to breakfast. First general quarters sounded. Everyone was grousing around, we had just been off maneuvers, it was Sunday morning. We thought it was just another drill again and why on Sunday morning? Then about thirty seconds later a boatswain's mate came just screaming over the speaker. And you could tell by his voice that something was wrong. 

My general quarters station was on the water watch [to check for water leaking into the ship]. I had to go the length of the ship on the third deck. I was about halfway down the port side, and we felt this one hit . I came back up out of the lower compartment into this big forward air compressor room,… and we got another hit. It shattered the lights and we were in complete darkness. Then it was just like a waterfall, all of a sudden you are in water. I came to and felt around and Centers was there with me…. 

"We could hear firing, and then later on after the main battle was over we could hear boat whistles, and we knew we were sunk, but we had no idea how bad everything was. We knew where we were trapped and expected the air to be used up. We would just pass out, and we were resigned to our fate. We didn't see any hopes at all knowing about where we were and everything. 

"You lose all track of time. Then we heard some tapping and we figured something was going on. They tapped one-two, one-two. Then we tapped back…. We could see a little bit of light. They are cutting away and I am watching the water below us. The water is coming up and they are cutting. I thought the water was going to beat them. It is up around your waist now, up around your neck. The water was running out where the rescue crew was working, so they just took off. You could hear them leave. It is about the worst thing, because you are that close to being rescued. You can just about touch somebody and then they had left.” 

“We pushed into this other compartment. We dogged the door down after we got in so none of that water could get in. Pretty soon they were up above us, and there was a hatch on this one. They yelled down asking if we were in a dry compartment. I told them "Yeah," and they said, "Stand clear." The door flops open and there's your rescue party. I thought it was just getting dark Sunday night when we came out and it was just getting light Tuesday morning. I lost twenty pounds since I didn't have anything to eat or drink for two days we were trapped in the ship." 

The source for this story was Dr. Kent Powell, "Utah Remembers World War II." 

Source: SoutherUtah.com: http://www.southernutah.com/Articles/Over_50/972094.756425

 

 

Pearl Harbor: 1st Lt. Annie G. Fox

       

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