Utahns at Pearl Harbor

Allan Kent Powell
History Blazer March 1996

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 a 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 crews were able to set him and a companion free. He was the last of thirty-two sailors to be rescued from the Oklahoma, which lost 450 of its 1,300-member crew during the attack. Interviewed nearly fifty years later, the ordeal remained vivid in Walter Staff's mind:

"I had been to breakfast. We had pancakes and sausages. First general quarters sounded. Everybody 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. There were four or five of us there, and we got another hit. It shattered the lights and we were in complete darkness. Somebody had a lighter. It gives you a lot of light when you are in total 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 still didn't know what had happened and never heard from or saw the other two or three guys. We were all right there together when the ship turned over.

"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 we expected the air to be used up. We would just pass out, and we were resigned to our fate. We didn't see any hope 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 were under a lot of pressure.

We knew they were there. 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 the two days we were trapped in the ship."

Source: Allan Kent Powell, comp., Utah Remembers World War II (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1991).

The above is taken from "Utah History To Go."

Attack on Pearl Harbor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Attack on Pearl Harbor
Part of the Pacific Theater of World War II
Photograph of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on the USS West Virginia. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over theUSS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard.
Date December 7, 1941 Location Primarily Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, U.S. Result Japanese major tactical victory U.S. declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. Entrance of the United States of America into the war
Belligerents
United States of America	Empire of Japan
Commanders and leaders
Husband Kimmel  Walter Short	Chuichi Nagumo  Isoroku Yamamoto
Strength
8 battleships 8 cruisers 30 destroyers 4 submarines 1 USCG Cutter[nb 1] 49 other ships[1] ≈390 aircraft	Mobile Unit: 6 aircraft carriers 2 battleships 2 heavy cruisers 1 light cruiser 9 destroyers 8 tankers 23 fleet submarines 5 midget submarines 414 aircraft
Casualties and losses
2 battleships totally lost 2 battleships sunk and recovered 3 battleships damaged 1 battleship grounded 2 other ships sunk[nb 2] 3 cruisers damaged[nb 3] 3 destroyers damaged 3 other ships damaged 188 aircraft destroyed 159[3] aircraft damaged 2,403 killed 1,178 wounded[4][5]	4 midget submarines sunk 1 midget submarine grounded 29 aircraft destroyed 64 killed 1 captured[6]

The attack on Pearl Harbor^{[nb 4]} was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan). The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.

The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

From the standpoint of the defenders, the attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time.^[13] The base was attacked by 353^[14]Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers.^[14] All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four being sunk. All but one (Arizona) were later raised, and six of the eight battleships were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship,^{[nb 5]} and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded.^[16] Important base installations such as the power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 65 servicemen killed or wounded. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured.

The attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan.^[17] Domestic support for non-interventionism, which had been strong,^[18] disappeared. Clandestine support of Britain (e.g., the Neutrality Patrol) was replaced by active alliance. Subsequent operations by the U.S. prompted Germany and Italy to declare war on the U.S. on December 11, which was reciprocated by the U.S. the same day.

Years later several writers alleged that parties high in the U.S. and British governments knew of the attack in advance and may have let it happen (or even encouraged it) with the aim of bringing America into war.^[19][20] However, this advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by mainstream historians.^{[21][nb 6]}

There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan. However, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was judged by the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.^[23][24]