Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War

Center for Pacific War Studies

Fredericksburg, Texas

Interview with

Capt (USN, Ret) Robert Hagen (USS Arron Ward - USS Johnston) [WW II Battles – Kwajalein, , & Leyte] Date of Interview: July 9, 2003 Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War Fredericksburg, Texas

Interview with Capt (USN, Ret) Robert Hagen (USS Arron Ward - USS Johnston) [WW II Battles – Kwajalein, Guam, Guadalcanal & Leyte]

Today is July 9, 2003. My name is Floyd Cox and I am a volunteer at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. We are here at the Towers in San Antonio, Texas, to interview Retired Navy Captain Bob Hagen regarding his experiences during World War II. Mr. Cox: Bob, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to visit with me concerning your experiences. I would like to start off by asking you a little about your background – where you were born, when you were born, your parents’ names, and a little about your young life.

Capt Hagen: I was born in San Francisco, California, in 1919. That makes me 84 years old at this time. My mother was of good Irish descent, a Catholic. Her name was Margarete Clifford. My Father was a Norwegian by the name of Ole O. Hagen. You can understand why my mother did not make me a “Junior.” I went through highschool in San Francisco. I won an invitation to go to the Naval Academy starting in 1938. In the meantime, my father had a job with Pan American World Airways teaching the pilots how not to run into mountains. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy in 1911, but he had been retired early for physical reasons. His job with Pan American entailed that he move from San Francisco to Brownsville, Texas. Talk about the boondocks. On my way back to the Naval Academy, before my mother and sister moved down there, I stopped by to see my Dad and say goodbye. There were no blacks in the town. They had all been shot up or run out, or something, and the school system – well, I will get to that. I went back to the

Παγε 1 οφ 50 Naval Academy and the first day I got back to Maryland they flunked me out because of my eyes. I was a weeping son, and I think that my dad was crying too for the expense of having to put me through college. I went back to Brownsville, Texas. My sister was a little older than I was, so she had already made plans to go to the University of Texas. When I got down there my Dad said, “We can’t afford to send both of you up there, so you go to Brownsville Junior College.” The comparison of education between San Francisco and Brownsville, Texas, was quite extensive. Also, I had gone to a year of prep school after graduating from highschool to get ready for the Naval Academy. I managed to amass 60 hours of college credits in one year at Brownsville Junior College. I took finals on various classes, etc. and I graduated from junior college in one year. Then I went up to the University of Texas. To go back a little, on my 17th birthday, my father marched me down to the enlistment place and said, “Line this young man up for the Naval Reserves.” I was duly sworn into the Naval Reserves as a Seaman Third Class at the age of 17. I was in the inactive reserves when I moved away from California, but I managed to stay in touch with the Navy, and in 1940 I heard from them. They wanted to know where I was, etc. I told them I was a senior in college. They said fine. All of this was by letter. In November of ‘40 I received orders to report for Navy training that I would become an officer when I graduated from college. This was rather standard procedure. I spent a month in the reserve fancy program, and in due time I graduated from college (University of Texas) in June 1940. They called it 90-day Wonder, S-7 program, or something like that. In 90 days I graduated and I was an Ensign. I was commissioned three months before the class that I would have been in at the Naval Academy, thereby I was senior to all of those fellows that had gone through the Naval Academy. After a few drinks I wouldn’t hesitate to let them all know it. The relativity of Ensigns was pretty insignificant at that time. My first assignment after graduating was to the

Παγε 2 οφ 50 Great Lakes Naval Training Station. I’m hot to go because I want to go to sea and fight the Japs. Well, what a let down! I went up there in October of 1941 and they gave me a job that had the best title I had in all of my time in the Navy. The job was Assistant Service School Selection Officer. I wondered, “What the hell is that all about?” I had this one boss who was a nice, kindly mustang. Do you know what a mustang is? It is an enlisted man who rises in ranks. He said, “Well, there is nothing to this job, just do what you are told to do.” In a sense what I had to do was give talks to 6,000 boots a week. He trained me for maybe a week. I was to give talks and explain what a boiler tender was, a gunners mate, yeoman, etc. I would give six lectures a week to 6,000 enlisted men, and then we would test them. I had 24 enlisted men that did the work – tested them all for IQ, mechanical aptitude – a lot of things. Then the results were given to me on cards. Each week the numerous training schools would send us a list of the number of men they wanted that would be appropriate for their line of work. The first thing I would do with these 6,000 cards was go through and pick out the first thousand that had the highest IQ’s. Then I said, “Now I’ll start thinking.” They had a place on the cards where they wrote first, second and third choices, so I would try to give them first or second choice if I thought they were qualified. A lot of discretion was going on, and I have no claim to any profound competency along this line. The roughest part was getting a hundred a week to go to pharmacy school. Not many people wanted to become pharmacist mates. I would extol the merits at these lectures. If they put that down, even as a third choice, that is what they got. We had to fill the quota. We would get letters back, our first insulting letters in the Navy, saying, “What idiot is sending us these people? They don’t want to become pharmacist mates.” I would get those almost every week, and my boss would come and say, “Oh, I get those all of the time.” Mr. Cox: Don’t worry about it?

Παγε 3 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: “Just keep doing your best Hagen. Don’t worry about it.” The two highlights there, well maybe three highlights – I was some how attached to one of the battalions of these men just because I was there and I was an Ensign. That meant that this one day we had to march, and I had a brand new sword. I had barely drawn it out because I’m left handed. Swords and I just didn’t get along very well. Out of the blue we were told we were going to have this big parade, so there was one Ensign at the front of the formation that had been there for six months or so, and then on the position to his left (port side) and rear would be Petty Officer, either a Chief Petty Officer or First Class, and he knew what the hell all of this was about. I was over on the right saying, “What do we do now?” I can remember marching along, passing in review with about 6,000 troops. Some Admiral was standing on the stand. I was supposed to salute and pull out the sword, whatever you do. Well, I yanked the sword out left handed and I was off to a bad start right then, and then I saluted as we were going by. I would salute and by then I had dug the sword into the ground. You should have heard the rippling of laughter behind me from all of these enlisted men loving to see me pulling the sword out of the mud. That was not a glorious moment for me. An interesting one came along sometime in November or December of ‘41. The came aboard with much fanfare. They were all going on the same ship. Then, sometime in January of ‘42 ... I mean between that time a war had started. Mr. Cox: You were still at Great Lakes? Capt Hagen: Yes, and I think that I know what I am doing by this time. One day my boss was out for some reason. He wasn’t very impressed by this job he had. Here, all of a sudden, I’m ushered into my office these five Sullivan brothers. They look like oak trees standing in front of me. They were all over six feet tall. They said, “We were told when we came in here that we would all go to the same ship.” Now, the only ones that I ever got to see were the ones that were

Παγε 4 οφ 50 going to these various service schools. None of them were smart enough, so I just threw their cards away – five out of six in the weeding-out process. How they got into see me, I do not know. They said, “We were promised to go to the same ship.” I said, “Hey fellows, there is a war going on now. You don’t want to go to the same ship in case anyone gets hurt.” It was just my 22 year-old opinion. I told them that I couldn’t do anything for them. I didn’t think much of it, but a couple of days later my boss came up with smoke coming out of both ears. He said, “I’ve just been chewed out by the Chief of Staff who remembered that they had this big promise of going to the same ship. He demands that we keep the promise and send those boys to the same ship.” I said, “Well, this doesn’t make very good sense to me.” He said, “Hagen, do what you are told to do in the Navy. You are 22 years old and you don’t have to think.” I knew I was pretty wrong there, so they went to the same ship. They were in the same battle, as I got into, on the USS Juneau at Guadalcanal. When I heard that ship had gone down and the five brothers were on it, I was thinking, “I told you so.” That was sort of a highlight. Mr. Cox: What Bob is referring to is the Sullivan brothers that all went on the same ship. It was the USS Juneau, and a movie was made about it called “The Sullivan Brothers.” Capt Hagen: The other memorable occasion there was when we received a one-page letter/directive, saying that we were to form a construction battalion. This Commander boss of mine, just for the hell of it, came out and said, “Fill this.” He said that they wanted it ready for the next morning. It was for 200 men for a construction battalion. I have no mechanical ability or aptitude whatsoever. Mr. Cox: How do you select them? Capt Hagen: Yes. He said, “Hagen, you make things so complicated. Read the thing. You have to have carpenters, plumbers, laborers, etc.” I said that I had made

Παγε 5 οφ 50 all of my selections for this week. They wanted this for the next morning. He said, “They are not looking for high IQ, they want people that know how to build things.” I brought him a drawer of maybe 500 of the cards after all of the plucking had been done. He started going through them. “Here’s a man.” We had to assign them rank ratings too. He said, “This guy is ten years as a carpenter, he’s a Chief.” Mr. Cox: Wow. Capt Hagen: “This guy has driven a truck for five years, he’s a 2nd Class.” In about 15 minutes he picked out about ten men for me, and said, “Now, that’s how it goes. Get out there, do it, follow orders, and have them ready to go in the morning.” He said, “You try to make things so difficult Hagen.” Incidentally, later on in the war they had seven psychologists working on this job. The only other officer in the group when I was there was one psychologist, and he was working on people that were too dumb. He was selecting them the other way – if they didn’t know what country they were in or where the capital was, or how many states, or who was President, he would throw them out. Mr. Cox: Do you remember the number of this Construction Battalion? Capt Hagen: It was either One or Two. One was formed in Norfolk and one at Great Lakes. Mr. Cox: That was the CB’s. Capt Hagen: Yes. Of course Americans are wonderful and adaptive people, so things work out. I often wondered what sort of a chaotic situation that group that was formed here endured. By this time I was tired of the job, and my Dad had been recalled into the Navy. He was working in the Bureau of Ordnance. He was a good engineer type of person. I didn’t pick up anything in engineering from him. I wrote him one day, and I said, “Dad, I’m tired of this. I want to get on a that is going to the Pacific.” He wouldn’t do anything impropriety-wise for me. I wanted to get going. So the first

Παγε 6 οφ 50 thing I knew, I had orders to go to a new construction ship. This is the Aaron Ward. In March of ‘42 I was a junior Ensign there. I was talking to the Exec and asked, “What are my duties?” He said, “Well, you are the Assistant Communication Officer.” I thought, “OK, what does that mean?” He said, “Can you type?” I said, “I passed a course in college at 23 words per minute.” He was impressed. The next thing I was the Acting Supply Officer. I asked, “What is that?” “Well, you are responsible for ordering and all of the stuff that supply officers do.” I had no interest in any of that. I had a Chief Petty Officer that did all of that, but I would have to report it all to the Captain. Then, the third thing was that I was the Radar Officer. I said, “What in the hell is that?” He pointed to a bed spring type of device up on the mast, and I said, “What does that do?” It was a Sugar Charlie radar, which I learned to hate desperately because it wasn’t worth a damn. I asked, “Well, who takes care of it?” “We don’t have anyone, you might talk to the Chief Radioman and the Chief Electrician and see if they can help.” My life was shot to hell right there with that assignment. Mr. Cox: You had three responsibilities there. Capt Hagen: Yes. Plus that, we had a terrible skipper, Horrible Orville was his name. I won’t give his last name. He had a fierce temper. I told the Exec we were going to the Pacific because my Dad specified that. When the Exec told the skipper, he called me into his room and chewed me out to where I left there crying thinking that I had never been talked to like that before in my life. I was walking down the deck in the dark, crying, thinking, “Oh God.” Before we left to start training the Chief Engineer had a breakdown and coughed up a whole bowl full of blood and had to be replaced, just by this skipper chewing on him. Three months later when we were out around Guadalcanal the one most competent, experienced officer we had was the Gunnery Officer. He was the third senior person on the ship, and all of the young officers were just awe struck because he was a wonderful influence on us all.

Παγε 7 οφ 50 He weighed about 250 pounds and was just a great guy. Mr. Cox: What was his name Bob? Capt Hagen: I can’t remember. Going ahead a little bit, one day he was holding some practice. This was out around Guadalcanal, and he was going to fire 20 rounds of 20 mm ammunition to test fire these guns. He had the watch and told the first gun to fire. The Captain was standing around, nosing around. That gun fired 13 rounds. A 20 mm gun is pretty rapid. The second one only had seven rounds. Maybe they shot an extra round or two, I don’t know, but the Captain got all excited about this and started asking questions – “Why is this happening, why is that....” This wonderful officer finally cracked and said, “Captain, you are the most unreasonable son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met in my life.” So here I am, jumping between the two of them, saying “Gentlemen, gentlemen...” I’m the junior officer and I was yelling to the side to the Quartermaster, “Get the Exec up here.” This fine officer was given a 1.0 fitness report and the next port we got into he was transferred to one of the other ships out there. Three months later he was killed aboard that ship. The Captain was an unreasonable and mean person. Mr. Cox: So you were a plank owner then? Capt Hagen: Yes. And then we went through the Panama Canal. Everyone on the ship went through it except me. I was dumped off on a dingy of some sort on the Atlantic side with all of the classified (Secret and Confidential) publications. I turned them in on that side, took a small boat over to the Pacific side, picked up the Pacific Fleet’s mode of operation, etc. and all of the publications. The ship went through the canal, everyone else did, but I went through it on a two-bit dingy. That was just the start of my problem. Then it started with the Captain wanting to know what everything was going about. It is really illegal to decode messages that aren’t addressed to you, either by direction or for information. I did all of this illegal stuff for the next eight months. He would say, “Break this message, break this one, break this one,

Παγε 8 οφ 50 etc.” I became an expert typist, and hated every minute of it, but that’s beside the point. I could tell from history that we were building up to Midway and we were assigned a Task Force of Admiral Pye. I will never forget him. We had six battle ships and one carrier, the first CVE. These are the ones that just go 17 knots and they are put together in no time at all on oiler hulls. Then we had five or six . We were at sea, and the buildup for Midway started. I was copying every message and we’d go to general quarters, etc. This nut we had for an Admiral would proclaim that the sun would always come up at 7 o’clock in the morning. Depending what we were doing between the time the word was put into effect where we were going to be the next morning at 7 o’clock, I would have to change all of the clocks on the ship, and the recognition signals on the mast – you know, the three lights on a mast, I’d have to change all of that. Another thing, this escort carrier was the first of its kind. We were on a circle, close enough in, where during 4-5 days, four planes off of this rickety escort carrier plowed into the superstructure part of the battle ships. We killed four of our own pilots. Mr. Cox: They were kamikazing their own ships. Capt Hagen: Years later I said, “I don’t recall us firing any, where in the world were we?” I have a picture somewhere... Mr. Cox: You are referring to a map – Coral Sea, Midway and actions. Capt Hagen: Here is where the action was. Here is San Francisco. See the old battle ships – they wouldn’t let them out. They were all obsolete after Pearl Harbor, so they didn’t let any of them get near a battle until they had the modern guns put on them, radar, etc. So it was probably the later part of the year before they were even put into battle. We were 45 miles west of San Francisco. Reading up on this famous guy Morrison, said, “People in San Francisco are hating these .” They were saying, “Why don’t you get out and fight the war?” They were all going ashore and being booed and sneered at.

Παγε 9 οφ 50 So I went through the battle of Midway emotionally hearing all of the strikes and the action reports. The Captain made me “break” them, so I knew which ships were going up to Alaska and fighting in the Aleutians. I’d hear about which pilot took his wife and children with him up in Alaska. Then all of the strikes, etc. of the carriers. So I went through the whole battle emotionally, and there I was off of San Francisco the whole time. Mr. Cox: Actually what he was doing was basically eavesdropping on somebody else’s messages, wasn’t he? Capt Hagen: Yes. Mr. Cox: He must have been pretty nosy. Capt Hagen: Oh, he certainly was. You know, the coded messages come on a long ticker tape, and I’d be down there and I’d gather up a flock of it. I wouldn’t even paste it up. I would just throw it in his lap. Mr. Cox: So you fought the battle of Midway roughly 50 miles off the coast of San Francisco? Capt Hagen: Yes. It was a battle, changing the time, etc. Not everyone could be that fluent on the battle of Midway, not being any further away than I was. We will go up to the August time period – During this time the Captain was badgering me... Mr. Cox: Is that August of ‘42? Capt Hagen: Yes, of ‘42. He would say, “Well you are the supply officer, why are we having stewed tomatoes twice this week?” Beats the hell out of me Captain! Do you want me to go and get the supply officer? He would say, “No, I want this report to come from you.” One day he really insulted me, and said, “Don’t you know anything about supply?” Now this was after 20-30 episodes. I said, “I know how to go to the store for bread, butter and milk for my mother, and that’s it Captain.” He had the look of pure hatred on his face. We had our moments. Oh, and then the radar. He would get hysterical when the radar would break down. Of course, all of these tubes

Παγε 10 οφ 50 blinking, etc., I made no effort to learn anything about it. I was typing all of the time. I would say to let the Chief Radioman or electrician explain to him what the problem was. He would reply, “I don’t want to hear from them, you are the officer, you make the report.” I would say, “Fine, it don’t work.” He would call me in the middle of the night and say, “This darn radar is broken again, get Hagen up to the bridge.” Mr. Cox: It was a miserable time, wasn’t it? Capt Hagen: Yes it was. Mr. Cox: Especially for a young Ensign. Capt Hagen: I think he just enjoyed bullying people. I can remember one night him calling me up there and he was outraged. We were lost. We had drifted away from the rest of the group and our radar was not working. This was an attack group with one . We had the New Jersey, six , and numerous other ships. It was a huge formation. We got lost. We drifted away from them because the radar didn’t work. So the next morning he really chewed me out. Finally a plane from one of the carriers came out and pointed the direction for us to take. The Captain would just get furious at me. One thing though, we could pick up mountains a hundred miles away. We would get a blip from them, but when we got 7,000 yards from the guide that we were staying with in the formation, we couldn’t pick him up. So the Captain would get mad at me for that. This was a primitive radar and it didn’t work worth a damn. He chose to take it out on me. Whatever kind of a personality that is, I don’t know. We were into some of the battles out there. The first night that we got out there was rather interesting. We approached Guadalcanal and were all alert. The Japs only had about 250 fighting men. They had some construction people there. Essentially, they didn’t resist, they ran into the bushes. One thing, on the way to Guadalcanal, we stopped by at Tonga Tabu. The name fascinates me. It is some God forsaken atoll somewhere between here and Australia. Subsequently it

Παγε 11 οφ 50 became a base for refueling, etc. At this point I could not understand why we were going into this atoll. Apparently there was some talk about a bad storm brewing. So in the middle of the night, sound general quarters. I’m running up to the bridge. We were rolling 45 degrees. We were anchored at the atoll. Half of the time one foot would be on the deck and the other one on the side of the ship at the rail. I managed to get up there without killing myself. The Captain was screaming down the voice tube to the engineers to get underway, get steam, because we were being dragged into the coral reefs that were close by. By sheer luck and determination, we got underway and got out of harbor. It was very rough sea, but it was better than being at anchor and being dragged into the coral reef. We escaped, but when we got to Guadalcanal the first day the message comes out to us, “You are directed to escort the New Jersey (this nice, new battleship – the only one that we had) back to Hawaii or 500 miles away back to Hawaii and then return.” We took off that same day in the evening and that night all of our fighting ships were at anchor around Guadalcanal and they were still in the process of getting the men and supplies ashore when down came the Jap force, a good size force. This was the first big battle. They came down the slot as they called it. Savo island is sitting there and they came in the southern half of Savo island and all of our ships were at anchor. We supposedly had two destroyer picket ships and they parted and let the whole Jap fleet come through and never did give any warning. So the Japs came in and made a big pass through. They ended up sinking four of our heavy cruisers and then going on their merry way. Mr. Cox: Was that what they called the Battle of Savo Island? Capt Hagen: Well Savo was there. They fought on one side and then the other side, but I don’t know what they called this. I don’t think they gave it a name because the only ones that fought were the Japs. Mr. Cox: You were already on your way. Capt Hagen: Yes we were a hundred miles away with the one ship that could have held its

Παγε 12 οφ 50 own because they probably had the best radar by that time. So when we came back the next day, the messages went flying around and doing all of this stuff, and I said, “We’ve been here less than 48 hours, and we’ve lost our one battleship and four heavy cruisers. This is a dangerous place to be at this time of the war.” This is the sort of fear, that you are 10,000 miles from home, are you going to be run out of there, do we have to escape to Australia? This gives you pause for thinking. Mr. Cox: Sure. Capt Hagen: That is the sort of fear, whether it is a battle or not. It put a lot of stress and strain on you. So we lost that battle and we started getting a little bit smarter and we had four carriers out there, the Wasp, the Enterprise, Saratoga, and Hornet. The first month we were out there the Saratoga gets torpedoed and its gone for a period of time back to Hawaii. Then, another big battle that was rather famous, the one where Hornet was the carrier that was sunk there. Have you ever interviewed the Admiral that lives herein the Towers? Mr. Cox: No I haven’t. Capt Hagen: You certainly should interview him. His name is Leu Hopkins1. He is an Admiral that lives here and is about my age. We both became Ensigns in ‘42. He was a pilot on the Hornet and he was a dive bomber. He stayed on in the Navy and became an Admiral. He has been the President of the Towers here for 4-5 years. Talking about this battle where the Hornet was sunk, and the Enterprise was bombed and hit. It didn’t sink, but it made it difficult for them to conduct any operations. The third one was the Wasp, and during this battle, or sometime, we were in the battle but none of the planes attacked the Wasp Group. These carrier groups are spread out all over. I had to look up after the war, and say, “Were we in that battle? I guess we were, we were defending, but they just never attacked us.” They

1See Museum archives for Lewis Hopkins interview of January 15, 2004

Παγε 13 οφ 50 concentrated on the Hornet, and sunk it.. Mr. Cox: Yes, the carriers. Capt Hagen: Then sometime shortly after that, we were guarding the Wasp, which was another big carrier, with nine destroyers and a couple of heavy cruisers somewhere in this formation. I can remember standing on the bridge one day, looking at the carrier because they give the flag signals on what we are going to do. So, if you are on watch you are looking at the carrier. I got my binoculars on it, and all of a sudden – “poof, poof.” It was about 7,000 yards away with streams of water coming up next to the Wasp. I witnessed it being torpedoed twice, and eventually sunk during that hour or so. It was quite dramatic. Mr. Cox: A Japanese sub had gotten through the destroyer screen then. Capt Hagen: Yes. They did the same thing with the Saratoga. Our sonar gear and also our torpedoes didn’t always work, so we had a lot of problems. We didn’t know how to fight to start off with. We were learning at Guadalcanal, but at a great cost to us and it was pretty scary to see the way that we were getting whipped around. At one point we had these five or six significant type of battles, but most of it was ongoing. They would sneak in reserves. The Japs would bring them in at night on board transports. They even got to where they would bring them down on . Mr. Cox: They would land on Guadalcanal? Capt Hagen: Yes, and we were bringing up supplies all of the time until finally around the first part of November, I would say the latter part of October, this message came from Vandegrift, who was a General in charge of the Marines ashore, sent out this dispatch to Halsey, who was in charge of the area, and Vandegrift said, in effect, and of course I broke the message, ... “we need food, we need ammunition, we need medical supply, we need it now within the next couple of weeks or send the transports up to pick us up.” Mr. Cox: This is a continuation, Vandegrift message.

Παγε 14 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: Well, the main characters here at this point were Admiral Halsey as the area boss, Kinkaide was the boss of the long carrier, but he is not involved in this operation too much. The two fighting admirals were Admiral Scott and Admiral Callahan. They got together ashore about three or four weeks before this desperate message from Vandegrift. Halsey was fairly new in his position, and the two Admirals that were around were Scott, who had won the battle of Cape Esperance. It was a messy battle. We screwed up. One of the main things that we did was shoot up one of our own ships. Fortunately we sank some of their ships and the “powers that be” decided it was a draw between the two units. We performed very poorly, and where were we. I said, “I don’t remember being in that battle.” Well, finally in looking in history books, I found one line on the Aaron Ward. We showed up the morning after this battle and escorted one of the damaged destroyers back to base. I said, “Is that why I don’t remember it?” There were no shots fired around us, but we were at the battle scene. Mr. Cox: I want to back up a minute, when the Wasp was sunk and you saw the torpedo hit, did your destroyer pick up any survivors? Capt Hagen: No, but several of the destroyers milling around did. Mr. Cox: Looking for that sub? Capt Hagen: Yes and we couldn’t find anything. It was a chaotic scene with ten destroyers, but we were not one of the destroyers that picked up anyone. A lot of times out there we were close to some of the action, but weren’t firing particularly. This big battle is forming up, and Scott had been successful and was the winner of this Cape Esperance battle. That is, if you want to call him a “winner.” Mr. Cox: Admiral Scott? Capt Hagen: Yes. Admiral Callahan was a very handsome fellow. He had been the Naval Aide to the President and he also had command of the San Francisco, the , for a year or so. He was kind to the men. They called him “Uncle

Παγε 15 οφ 50 Dan.” Those were the two Admirals and they were both the same year at school, I believe, so you didn’t know which one was senior to which when there was some discussion of it. Admiral Halsey finally assigned Callahan the job of being the senior one. It would have been more logical to take Scott because he had been through one battle and knew the screw-ups that we had made, etc. One thing, the fantastic thing about all of this stuff at this point, one cruiser had come out, a new cruiser, and it had Sugar George radar. This was a big factor of winning the war – when this system was put on all of the ships. It made all of the difference in the world. This one ship, a named Helena, was in a formation and it was reporting the enemy at 15,000, 17,000 yards. The enemy couldn’t possibly see us from that distance at night. Here is the biggest screw-up in naval history probably – it was discussed on what ship would the officer-in-charge, Callahan, take during this battle – the flagship. He said, “Oh, it has to be the San Francisco. That is the ship where I know all of the people, etc.” I don’t know, I’m guessing here, but I think that Scott had to be saying ...You ought to get on the Helena, they are the one with the good radar, you will know what is going on. I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t put in some word such as that. Well, also, the skipper of the Helena, you know that he was talking... I mean the skipper of these ships were listening in while these three are making the decision. I’m sure he was saying... Come aboard me, I have this good radar. I can give you the dope. Mr. Cox: Right. Capt Hagen: Scott should have been for it, but he didn’t say anything, and Halsey ignored this advice. I have a feeling, and this is just an inside story, that the skipper of the Helena, Capt Hoover, had to aggravate Halsey by stressing that he had the good radar out here – ride my ship, and Halsey ignored him. Halsey got even with Hoover after this battle. That we will get to later. It is unthinkable that he wasn’t riding the ship with the good radar.

Παγε 16 οφ 50 Mr. Cox: Sure. Capt Hagen: So, we are ready to save the Marines on Guadalcanal. We have supplies, etc. We are on our way up around the 10th or 11th of November I guess. We have five cruisers and eight destroyers in this main formation. This was the fighting formation. The supply ships, transports, etc. were handled by another Admiral and their part was to get stuff ashore, etc. Our part was to guard them and provide anti-air support, so it was two different commands. We are getting our supplies off on the 11th and 12th and we hear that the Japs are coming down. This one late afternoon, the transports had unloaded most of their supplies. Their boss, who was a wonderful Admiral Kelly Turner, a good Irishman, he ordered his ships to retire – the transports. He turned the fighting unit over to Callahan and said that he should take it from here. Our battle formation consisted of four DD’s up front, then six cruisers, then four more DD’s. We were the 10th ship in the formation. Mr. Cox: Bringing up the rear. Capt Hagen: The Jap formation was approaching. The Helena began reporting radar contacts continuously then down to this point where we are almost running into each other, Callahan was saying, “Well, where are we now? Are you talking about relative bearings, or other type of bearings?” All of this chit- chat until the two formations actually were clashing, going into each other. Mr. Cox: Almost running into each other. That was called the naval battle of Guadalcanal then. Capt Hagen: Yes. It was a three-day battle. This was the biggest battle in naval history. The only one bigger was the battle of . Mr. Cox: You are going to talk about that later? Capt Hagen: Yes. I’ve essentially told my story on that, but we’ll see. On this ship the interesting thing is we were way back and we didn’t know what was going on. Our radar was out, of course. Mr. Cox: As usual.

Παγε 17 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: And we also had a squadron commander onboard this ship and he was running around. He was useless because our radar didn’t work and he didn’t know any more than I did about what was going on. Mr. Cox: If I am looking at that graphic correctly, there were no aircraft carriers involved in this.

Capt Hagen: This was nighttime. The one carrier was the damaged Enterprise, which was off somewhere, but nearby. This was a naval battle at night, on the 12th and 13th. I’ll tell my experience about this battle. We were in formation. The Captain had gotten through chewing me out about the radar. I will say that I was probably called to the bridge at least four times a night for the two weeks before this, 50-60 times. I would go up there and he would be sitting up there with a wet towel mopping his face. It got to the point where I was saying, “Captain, you are dead tired. I’m dead tired having to get out of bed every hour to come up and report to you. Why don’t we just say that the radar isn’t worth a damn and chewing me out doesn’t do any good.” He was saying, “You do what I tell you to do.” Then, another incident, a week or so before this, just to show you his personality as much as anything, I had to take care of the mail, Confidential and Secret stuff, on my hands and knees by the safe with the steel door banging into me. I said, “I hate this job.” I got this letter on changing our recognition signals. I read this thing. I don’t know where the Communications Officer was. I don’t even remember his name or whether he ever did anything. So I read this directive/change and I didn’t understand it. I tried again. So I went to the Exec and said, “Tell me what this means. It is something important, but I don’t know what it is.” He said, “Well, it beats the hell out of me.” Finally, I asked him to take it up with the Skipper. He said, “No, why don’t you?” The Exec didn’t want to mess with him either. I went to the Captain and I told him my problem, and he turned on me furious, and said, “That is your job. You are not going to

Παγε 18 οφ 50 make an asshole out of me by asking simple questions like that. Read the memo and obey it.” He wasn’t going to ask the Flagship what this message meant. It happened that we got into this battle and I had the recognition signals, or what I thought they were, but I’m not sure of them. So this battle starts and we didn’t know what was going on. Just an aside thing – we weren’t shooting, but there was a lot of stuff going on ahead of us. I saw something going on behind us. I went back and looked at the destroyer right behind us, the Barton. It had been hit by a torpedo, had blown up and sunk while I watched. It happened very fast. That was just one incident, but then came around to where we found these ships had passed through us. Mr. Cox: The Japanese fleet had passed through you? Capt Hagen: Some of them had. It was a complete melee at this point. They turned their recognition signals on. We had a three mounted recognition signal, blue, white and red. I think our signal for that particular night was blue, blue and white. Mr. Cox: Those signals were on your mast? Capt Hagen: Yes. They are lights that you turn on. The Captain was turning them on periodically. I guess it was just out of nervousness. Well, finally the destroyer over to starboard started firing at us. It was there and they had a radar up and the fighter/director radar picked it up. I guess they were flashing their recognition signal. They had two of our colors, but not the third, but the two were similar to two of our three. So it could be that a ship was asking me as friend or foe. This is where you say one of two words – friend or foe when asked. I popped out with “foe” as a probability because this was part of the unsure. To explain why I wasn’t sure was that we had not received a dispatch in the mail a few days before we were heading up toward this battle point, where most of the other ships had it. We had not received it, so I had a honest point of not being sure of what we were supposed to do. At that point I had no choice but to say one of two things.

Παγε 19 οφ 50 To this day, I don’t know whether I was right or not. That was the one highlight, and then the another one was just a short while latter a ship behind us got torpedoed, the Monson. That was burning so fast and so hard that the skipper of the ship had to jump from the bridge level into the water to get away from the fires. As I was going back to witness this, we got hit and I got hit. It was quite a sensation. I was standing essentially by myself in sort of the rear part of the bridge. I was looking through my binoculars to see what was going on behind us and we were hit down in the wardroom. The shrapnel came up from below. I was standing, and not with my legs crossed, and I got three or four little dings of shrapnel going into both legs. I got a bolt, about 1.2" in diameter and 4 inches long rammed into my thigh. That didn’t hurt particularly. I just knew I had something there. But the thing that got me, my hand was on the binoculars and when I got hit, this arm started going up and up. I didn’t know what was going on. It was so dark I started feeling around, and I had a lot of blood on my left arm. This is what it looks like. Mr. Cox: Bob is showing me a scar right above his elbow on the inner part of his arm and it is about a four inch scar. Capt Hagen: There was no pain, there was shock. I started walking forward and passing by the Chief Signalman. He was a fine fellow, intelligent person. I called him by name, and said, “I’ve been hit and you take over my spot as Officer of the Deck on the starboard side.” I told him I would tell the Captain. I walked up and I was feeling around. I knew I was bleeding enough that I wasn’t going to last long and I told the Captain, “I’m hurt, and so and so is taking my place.” He said, “OK.” I sat down and was feeling around. I knew I was losing a lot of blood. Some officer came up that was on the staff and said, “I’ll put a tourniquet.” He said, “Now loosen it up every ten or 15 minutes.” I’m sitting there, and we had two pharmacist mates, and up came the first one. He inquired as to whether I had been hurt. I said that I had

Παγε 20 οφ 50 been hurt, but that I had a tourniquet on, and “bang” he hits me with a shot of novocaine, or rather morphine. So I was still sitting there and the next Petty Officer pharmacist mate came up, same thing. They were doing what they were taught to do at school. I thought I was going to pass out, so I got ready to lie down, out of the way hopefully, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be loosening the tourniquet. I also didn’t want to go through life without a left hand when I’m left handed. I threw the tourniquet aside. I was also very tired from being up so many hours with the skipper wanting to know about the radar, so I think that I went to sleep. Also, two shots of morphine is enough to knock you out. So I woke up at dawn. I’m lying there and I must have been quite a sight since I was bathed in blood. This is the scene the morning after this fight. Here is Savo Island, and this is a little Jap ship. This is the Jap battleship here and here is the Aaron Ward over here. We are about 15,000 yards away from this battleship. They are dead in the water, we are dead in the water. Mr. Cox: So this map is shown in this book called, “Struggle for Guadalcanal” shows the aftermath of the naval battle for Guadalcanal. There are three Japanese ships dead in the water, and five American ships. Among them was the Aaron Ward. Capt Hagen: Yes. So, they picked me up in the morning. We are dead in the water. We had been hit a bout eight times with shells. We had lost power and the skipper was basically screaming down to the engineering group to get the steam up. During the course of the time, they got me up. Well, first I guess the Captain came along pretty quick and he offered me a cigarette, and lit it for me. That was the first kind thing he had done for me since I had been onboard. They finally picked me up and put a life jacket on me, and sat me in the Captain’s chair so I could float off if the ship was sunk. During this period, the battleship was as frustrated as we were. We noticed that the Portland, one of our heavy cruisers, was dead in the water. It really wasn’t, it

Παγε 21 οφ 50 had been hit in the stern and their rudder was bent so that all they could do was run around in circles. During one of their circles they took a shot at this Jap destroyer over here, and they did sink that. The Monson eventually went down, and the Atlanta sunk; the Portland survived. The battleship said they might as well take a few shots at us. The Captain really got excited when two 1 ton shells were fired. Mr. Cox: What Japanese battleship was that?

Capt Hagen: Hiei. Here we were about 16,000 yards away. Two shells came down like rain drops and they might have landed within 500 yards. That tends to tighten you up. I had these shots of morphine and the loss of blood, I got amused. The second round, we could see them fire, and the skipper would duck behind the steering wheel. I got to wondering as to what protection he was going to get from those if one of those one-ton shells lands on it. They fired four salvos at us. A tug came out and took us in tow and took us into Tulagi. The next morning I was off-loaded on a stretcher and taken to the opening day of our hospital on Tulagi. This was rather classical. I will tell the story. I was in la-la land. They take me in on a stretcher, and all of a sudden I’m sat down on a couple of dollies (platform), and there are two doctors standing there. I don’t know whether they pulled this thing out of my leg or not. They wanted to just tie a tourniquet to me and send me on. They carried me into one of the old huts that had been abandoned by the French and I was put in a cot right next to a cage. The cage was for people who had gone out of their mind and there were four people in there and they were yelling, climbing around, etc. I can remember a nice Catholic priest coming up and saying, “My son, can I do anything?” Here I was lying in the same clothes, blood all over. I said, “Yes, you can clean me up a little bit, if you have time. By the way, I’m an officer, I don’t know whether that counts at a time like this, but I would rather get away from the cage than get cleaned

Παγε 22 οφ 50 up.” He cleaned me up a little and they had fixed up some of the huts, I guess for officers first and then they would do others. The next thing I know I’m being carried by stretcher into this nice hospital-type surrounding, a nice all-American bed. I remember trying to get off of the stretcher and into this nice bed. Somewhere along, this arm had stopped bleeding, but it was all inside. Instead of bleeding to death, it coagulated. Something gave way and I started bleeding again profusely. This corpsman said, “Get up, get up, you are going to get blood all over the sheets.” I thought that was a classic. Five days later the ship was repaired enough, they came for me and I got on the Aaron Ward, and went back out to Espiritu Santos and spent a week or two there just lying around carrying this tourniquet with me. Mr. Cox: You were back onboard the Aaron Ward? Capt Hagen: Yes. I was on the Aaron Ward until just a day or two after it got to Esperito Santos. They dumped me ashore there, but this was a good enough hospital situation. About two weeks later a hospital ship came in and I was transferred to that – still carrying the tourniquet. We went to Suva in the Fiji Islands and I’m in this big ward. The highlight of that trip! All of a sudden there was a big stir one day. Looking to the other side of the hospital room, a guy who had an artery in his leg that had been damaged, and it gave way. I guess they were dressing him or something. He shot blood up to the ceiling. All of a sudden two or three doctors were there doing all of this stuff to him. I said, “Oh my God. With this rubber tube around here, I didn’t realize you were so valuable. I’ll take better care of you.” That was quite a sight to see. Then I had a Doctor from Mayo, a young, nice looking fellow. Probably one of their stars. He operated on this arm when we got to Suva. He went in and cut both sides of the artery and said that the veins would pick up the blood supply, which they did. The rest of it was insignificant stuff. That was the only delicate thing. I guess it was a little over a month when I came back to the States on another hospital ship. I ended up at Mare Island hospital near

Παγε 23 οφ 50 San Francisco. My arm was in a sling at that point, and at a certain point the artery was cured, but the arm had frozen in a bent position. I couldn’t straighten it out, so I had to go through about two months’ of physical therapy. This nurse would get me down on this mat to stretch, and have me carry a bucket of sand. Often I would be crying out in pain. She would say, “This is the only way that I can get it straight.” Mr. Cox: It did, didn’t it? Capt Hagen: Yes. Mr. Cox: You have perfect mobility in that arm now? Capt Hagen: Yes. There were no bones hit. I guess I spent three months at Mare Island in California, but we got real cozy. We got our liquor supply in and we would have a tottie before lunch. Then at four o’clock sharp we’d get dressed and the nurses would get ready and we would go into town. One of them would drive. I guess there were about seven fellows. We all came back and went through the same war situation, so we became friends. The nurses were very accommodating. We had quite a nice three month stay there. Then I had three months’ of liberty, extended liberty. What do you do with three months? I wasn’t married, or had any connections at the time. So I went by the fraternity house. I got a lot of kidding there. Oh, one thing, the Captain felt sorry for me for all of the mean things that he had said. I guess on the basis of the one word I said “foe”, he awarded me the Silver Star. I did something right. Mr. Cox: You got a Silver Star and a Purple Heart out of that? Capt Hagen: Yes. Mr. Cox: Any more stories in your exciting first part of WW II before we discuss your adventures on th latter part of the war on the USS Johnston? Capt Hagen: There was one time on the Aaron Ward that we were assigned with another destroyer to go up to Guadalcanal and bombard for the troops that were around Henderson Field. The Japs were closing in on them and two

Παγε 24 οφ 50 destroyers went up and fired shore bombardment. I was just junior officer of the deck at this point, but we knew we were going up there and everyone thought it was going to be a scary mission. We start going up there and we must have had four calls to general quarters in a matter of an hour or two. These kids, were the lookouts and anytime there was a wind ripple on the water, they would yell, “torpedo” or “submarine sighted.” I thought I was going to be worn out before we got up to start the bombardment. After this battle at Guadalcanal, the remaining ships – I believe there were about six of them, formed up and started going back to base, Espiritu Santos, and the most senior one was the skipper of the light cruiser Helena. The other light cruiser that was there was the Juneau. They also had the San Francisco, but it had been severely hit. The Admiral and the Captain were killed right at the beginning of this battle. Callahan never gave another order. Mr. Cox: This was Callahan that was Captain of the San Francisco? Capt Hagen: He was an Admiral at this point. They had a Captain that ran the ship, but Callahan was the one that gave the overall orders to the entire formation. the whole thing. Mr. Cox: As you prefaced a while ago, he made the decision to stay on the San Francisco, rather than go to the Helena. Capt Hagen: Yes, that is correct. There is some logic to knowing who you are talking to, but this ignorance of the Sugar George radar was unforgivable, to be ignorant at that point. Scott should have known better. He was riding the light cruiser Atlanta, and that ship got sunk. He was killed, so he never got involved in the argument afterward. I think the Navy covered this up. They had to do that because it was just a stupid, stupid thing. So here is the USS Helena, the USS Juneau and the USS San Francisco leaving. That was three of the cruisers, and then about four destroyers. Some were wounded and some weren’t, some were OK. The Helena was in charge of this whole group. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Juneau gets torpedoed. Apparently

Παγε 25 οφ 50 she had torpedo damage during the battle. I’m just quoting books now. As far as I knew though, she didn’t have any damage, but when she was hit by these torpedoes the whole ship blew up right in front of peoples’ eyes. Just incidently, the five Sullivan brothers blew up at the same time. Now, I’ve looked into this a little bit extra, but I don’t have any verification. This is just “story telling.” I know that the skipper and the Exec on the Juneau were disturbed, like I was, by having these five brothers, and they tried at least twice to tell the Navy that they should not have all of the brothers on the same ship. That became a law shortly after this battle. Mr. Cox: Yes, the “Sullivan Law.” Capt Hagen: It was just common sense thing to me. I had forgotten all about them. I had more to worry about with the big battles going on. So the Juneau couldn’t get rid of them, and I’m sure this Captain Hoover, the Skipper of the Helena, was more than insistent – they had this good radar and he was saying... “Halsey, have Admiral Callaghan ride my ship, I’ve got the radar.” I’m sure that he was too insistent, and the Admiral told him he was running the show — something to that effect. Then this thing about the Juneau happens and Halsey knows about this story, but he realizes the skipper of the Helena had been correct, so he was mad at him making him look bad. All of a sudden the skipper of the Helena had to decide when the Juneau went down, what is he going to do. His ship was in fine shape, the San Francisco was in terrible shape, and the Juneau has disappeared. He dropped some life rafts and little stuff like that, and signaled to a plane that was flying around that they were to tell Halsey that the Juneau had gone down. It had a crew of a bout 500 men. After this battle the night before, Halsey wanted Hoover to leave destroyers behind, to look for the submarine and pick up survivors of the Juneau. He didn’t do that. He thought his ships were beat up enough. I sympathize, if you have submarines around the best thing to do was to get out of that area, at least for the heavy ships. So, Halsey, all of a sudden jumps on

Παγε 26 οφ 50 the Helena’s skipper and faults him for failing to go back and give proper assistance. Only about seven survivors were ever picked up from the Juneau. You could say that was a terrible thing, but when you think about what we had been through, etc., I don’t fault this wonderful skipper of the Helena. Halsey censored him (Hoover) and he never got another naval command at sea. I think this was because Halsey was mad at him for being right! Then, as far as the Juneau going down, it just proved that you don’t put five brothers on one ship. That was all a little story that was going on there, and that I happened to be a part of. Mr. Cox: From the beginning. In other words, when it first started back at Great Lakes. So you had three months’ leave. Now, your Dad was in the Navy too. Was he state-side or overseas? Capt Hagen: Dad was recalled to active duty in 1939. He spent a year as our Naval Attache in Norway, Sweden. He was a Commander of Convoys for one year – to England and Russia. He never lost a ship, which was remarkable! Later on he served as Port Commander of a port in England. More later. Mr. Cox: Were you still an Ensign at this time? Capt Hagen: I had just made JG. We were promoted very fast in those days. In the three months of leave, I finally ended up in Washington, D.C., where my Mother was, and my Dad was in the Bureau of Ordnance. What he was doing early on in the war was deciding what equipment that had to give what firms to make what – a tank, a plane. General Motors, what do they get; Ford, what do they get. Everyone wanted to be a part of it, but who needs what piece of machinery that they can spare from another. It had to be one of the most gigantic, complex, brilliant, decision-making jobs. My Dad was just a part of it, but it was really fantastic. You hear about us building up, but what were we supplied to build, where does it go, etc. Mr. Cox: Who is going to do it, all of that. Capt Hagen: So, supply was a miracle though – supplying us 10,000 miles away in that

Παγε 27 οφ 50 God forsaken part of the world. But, I ended up in Washington, D. C. My Mother was there, which was nice, but I thought, “I don’t want anything more in communications..” I had to figure out something else. I got there, looked around, and they had a fire control and gunnery school for officers. It was a 16 week course. I thought that would be it! I talked to the Boss of the school. He asked if I had any orders. I said, “No, but I want to become a gunnery officer.” He didn’t see anything wrong with it. I was on leave so I entered this 16 week program. The first time they send you out you are an Ensign “nothing.” After a battle you are treated with some sort of respect, so they knew I was free and somehow or other they knew where I was. About 14 weeks into the course an officer in BUPERS called and said, “Come on in Hagen and we will see what your next assignment is and what you would like to do.” I went in to see him. He said, “You want to be a Communications Officer of course.” I said, “No, I’m becoming a Gunnery Officer. Give me two more weeks and I’ll graduate from this gunnery and fire control school. Then you can assign me.” I told him that I wanted to go to a new destroyer as a gunnery officer on the West Coast. He said, “OK.” That was how much experience I had to become a gunnery officer, but in those days you could get away with a lot of stuff. I finished the school and went to the USS Johnston as a gunnery officer, and the third senior officer aboard. Mr. Cox: Where was the Johnston when you were assigned to it? Capt Hagen: In Seattle. Mr. Cox: You went onboard in Seattle? Capt Hagen: Yes. From Miami. I ended up in Miami before the assignment, so I had a 3,000 mile train ride to get to that assignment. That is how I got to the Johnston and met this wonderful skipper. Mr. Cox: What was your skipper’s name? Capt Hagen: Ernest Evans. I had completed the first part of the war – tough, fearful. My second tour of duty would be quite different. During the second part of the

Παγε 28 οφ 50 war we had more ships – August 7, 1943. We went out to the battle area in January of ‘44 starting at Kwajalein. We had an overwhelming force of battleships, numerous carriers, and other ships. We had no fear there, ,just little alarms here and there. This first eight months that I was on the Aaron Ward we were in all sorts of uneasy situations. The final battle there for me – the battle for Guadalcanal in November 13-15 was a dilly. Mr. Cox: OK Box, we are back at Seattle and you are just getting assigned to the USS Johnston. Capt Hagen: When I arrived there the ship was one month away from being completed and just had senior petty officers there, the Captain, Chief Engineer, etc. The rest of the inexperienced crew, say 200 men, were off to some training school with the Exec and several of the junior officers learning preliminary stuff about being aboard a ship. For the first month or so I was also acting as the Exec because he wasn’t there. The Captain was very cordial in greeting me and very nice. In his previous assignment when the war started he was in the Far East navy there, around Indonesia and places like that. He was on an old destroyer with 3" guns, and he was literally run out of there by overwhelming Jap naval forces, he and various other ships down there. Our whole fleet was sort of overwhelmed by the Japs, and he came back to the States with his tail between his legs after having been an Exec on this destroyer. He had a lot of Indian blood in him. His friends called him “Chief.” We did not. I called him “Captain.” He was a very easy going, but a natural fighting man. What that consists of I don’t know, but he had it – whatever it was. He could be somewhat forgiving too. This was his first assignment as a commanding officer, so he was prepared. Understand there was a war going on. Well, one of the key men on any ship is the Chief Bosun Mate, so one day we were sitting in the office and I am talking to the Captain, and he is there and I’m here, and all of a sudden in between us comes this big . I look up and he is interrupting a conversation.

Παγε 29 οφ 50 Mr. Cox: Between two officers. Capt Hagen: Yes. His coat was open and his hat was on the back of his head and this mop of hair sticking out. I got up a looked at him, and I’m sure my face fell, and he said, “I’m your Chief Bosun Mate.” I introduced him to the Captain and the Captain was very cordial. He might have straightened up a little bit when he knew he was talking to the Captain, but I finally sent him on his way. I turned to the Captain and I said, “I don’t think I like that son-of-a-bitch.” The Captain got all upset and defensive. He said, “Now Hagen, you have to understand there is a war going on.” I had heard that line before. He said, “We’ve got to expect to have a raw crew and we have to do a lot of training. You need to have a positive attitude.” I thought, “OK.” I still didn’t think I was going to like the guy. Mr. Cox: What was this Captain’s name? Capt Hagen: Ernest E. Evans. A month later the rest of the crew, the Exec Officer, the rest of the junior officers, and the rest of the crew arrived in mass. So we were going to have an all-ship pre-commissioning party, and the Captain tells the Medical Officer to have proper drinks, etc., for this party. We rented this big room in a hotel and we are going to the party. Everyone is there. The officers are separated from the enlisted men. In those days there was more of a separation. I had a date was off somewhere and we didn’t arrive at the party until perhaps half way through. About the same time the Exec is escorting the Captain out. I guess he (the skipper) had had his share. I wouldn’t accuse him of anything, but he left arm-in-arm with the Exec. Mr. Cox: He had a few drinks. Capt Hagen: I would say that was probably true. We went in and had a drink. It became noisier and noisier so I finally went outside where the crew was, and it was all boiling up. There were arguments going, pushing and shoving, and I was looking around for help. The Captain and Exec have gone, so I was the senior officer present at this point. I ran across this Chief and he thinks about

Παγε 30 οφ 50 as much of me as I think of him, and his wife is in agreement, but I’m pleading with him. I said, “We’ve got to slow these people down. I’ve got to call for the ambulance, etc.” It was breaking out into a mess. Mr. Cox: Free for all. Capt Hagen: While I’m telling him this story, I notice the wife is doing something and the next thing I knew she wound up with this purse, swung it and it just missed my jaw. It would have broken my jaw had it hit it. That is how much of a help he was. The riot squad came and loaded all of these drunk kids. They had been drinking “apple cider” or whatever the doctor cooked up. We got everyone back to the ship some how or other and the next morning the Captain came into the office. “It was a great party.” I said, “Oh, it wasn’t without incident.” I think the bill was $10,000 for damage to the hotel. He said, “Oh my God, did all of that happen?” I didn’t go into too much detail, but needless to say, I still didn’t like that son-of-a-bitch Chief Bosun Mate. I mumbled some words to the Exec because I knew the Captain didn’t want to hear me talking about the Chief, but he proved that I was right during training. We had not started in on that yet. We went through training and this sorry Chief Bosun Mate was with us, and he had the crew so turned against me I was somewhat aggressive making decisions, etc., that I was afraid to go out onboard the ship at night. He was talking as bad against me as I was against him. The day before we set to sail to go to the South Pacific, guess who jumped ship and went AWOL? I can remember sitting at the Wardroom table when someone came in and told the Exec, but the Captain was sitting there and hearing it all. The Exec was saying, “Oh dear, oh we don’t have anyone to replace him. I’ll go ashore and see if I can find someone.” The Captain said, “No, I will go ashore and see if I can find someone.” I knew he was looking at me and I was thinking, “I told you so.” To show you the charm of this guy, he went ashore to see who was available. The only one that looked good to him was some guy that had just been back

Παγε 31 οφ 50 two weeks from overseas. He had gotten to see his wife, etc., and Captain Evans said, “There’s my boy.” He started sweet talking him. He started talking about his first trip out in the South Pacific and then he was talking about what a terrible time we had going through training without a Chief Bosun Mate and had this guy almost in tears. The next thing I knew there was this fine, young, fellow, 30 years old with six years experience and he comes aboard and sails with us. The whole tenor of the ship changed. He was very respective of all of the officers. He and I got along just fine. Mr. Cox: Do you recall his name? Capt Hagen: Yes, his name was Clyde Burnett. These are things that we will get into more in detail. Another fellow I thought highly of was an electronics technician. I don’t know how smart this guy was, but he came aboard and had just been recruited. He went to electronics school and came aboard and had never been to sea. He was an absolute genius around anything electronic. I would call that the radar was broke down and he would come and look it over, kick it a couple of times to see if a tube would break, and all of a sudden he would have it fixed. I thought he was the greatest guy on the ship beside the Captain. He kept things running right. I’m now telling a story on this particular individual. Our first assignment getting out to the South Pacific was the invasion of Kwajalein. This is one of many atolls. We happened to be the ship that was assigned to go inside the lagoon and do shore bombardment inside there, and then the transports would follow us in and they would gather around us and their landing boats would go into the beach. We were firing away until the troops were about a thousand yards from the beach. We were told to cease fire then so that we didn’t hit any of our troops. I got on top of the director and was sitting there all by myself. The sight of going in there and seeing the fire coming out and hitting some of the landing boats, and obviously killing people. It was such an over- powering sight that I broke down into tears. I was up there all by myself. It

Παγε 32 οφ 50 was a dramatic sight. About that time, coming up from down below is music on the loudspeaker system, “The Sleepy Lagoon.” ...A tropical moon, a sleepy lagoon... I almost fell off of the top of the direction. I said, “I know who did that.” I think even the Captain snickered afterward. It was a pretty cutesy thing to do. Mr. Cox: Do you remember his name? Capt Hagen: No, but I’ve got it written down somewhere. Mr. Cox: OK. That’s fine. Capt Hagen: You run into people... I was so interested to see what I was getting in the new crew coming aboard. The Chief Gunnersmate I ended up with had never been on a modern destroyer, so he didn’t know anything about 5" guns. He had 20 years in the Navy and was an ignorant. I wondered, “What’s next?” So the next gunnery person comes aboard and he was gunners mate first class – young, and knew something about modern destroyers, but on this unpleasant occasion he had been hit over the head with a beer bottle the night before. He had scars all over his face. I was wondering what battle he had been in. He knew his stuff and we got along fine. The only other rated one was a second class gunnersmate, but he had never been to sea. Here he was a second class gunnersmate, and I was wondering what he knew. Well, when he went through gunnersmate third school to become a gunnersmate he was so brilliant they kept him on as a teacher. When he arrived at the ship, he was already a second class gunnersmate. I held that against him for a while, but he was nice looking and he was obviously intelligent. Actually, in six months I had him second in command of the 5" guns. The class was the top dog. The chief was down to third. He was not a friend of mine, and I wasn’t a friend of his. Owens was such a brilliant guy that half way through our trip I started training him to work on the director and fire control so that he would be well enough rounded. The first time I had a chance for him to go up for first class gunnersmate he passed that test with flying colors. He kept

Παγε 33 οφ 50 doing so well that after the battle I said, “This guy is out of sight for promotions. I don’t want to give him a medal, I want him to be made Ensign.” That is what he should have been. Also the electronics guy. They were better trained than most ensigns that I knew of. The guys were special. Both of them were made officers. Mr. Cox: From the ranks? Capt Hagen: Yes. Let me give you an idea of what went on when we were out there. We started off at Kwajalein. Then we went to Eniwetok. You’ve heard of that? Mr. Cox: Yes. Were you supporting a ground offensive? Capt Hagen: We had a few duties with the carriers, but that was rather dull. We considered that was glamorous; that was the high part of the Navy. They had new battleships and new cruisers, whereas the group that landed the troops, etc., we escorted the troops and transports and did shore bombardment before the troops landed. That group would include the old battleships. They would be doing their firing and we would be doing ours. Mr. Cox: In these type of landings, did you ever come under attack from the air, or from ground artillery from the islands? Capt Hagen: Insignificant amount of return fire during the landings. We never had any casualties that way. We were getting pretty sophisticated and we knew how to do the shore bombarding. Sometimes we liked that, and other times we wished we were with the carriers. We did at least five islands, five invasions, Guam, the Marianas, Palau, Babelthoup, Tongatabu. The latter two were among my favorites. Mr. Cox: That would be five battle stars, would it not? Capt Hagen: Yes. Well, I mentioned a couple of them that were...Babelthoup was in with the Palau group. I sort of lost count of all the shore bombard. I discounted them unless it was something that would shoot back at you. The first island, Kwajalein, was a novelty. It was interesting, and a couple of days later when the battle was essentially over and they allowed the skippers of the

Παγε 34 οφ 50 bombarding ships, such as ours, and the gunnery officers to come ashore and see the damage, the Captain and I went ashore. I felt like a tourist. I was carrying binoculars, I don’t know why, and he wore his cap with the gold braid. He had made Commander. I had a floppy thing and I was a Lieutenant at the time. I would say to the Captain, “I like to stay close to you because there is still remote fire around. If anyone is going to get shot, they are going to shoot at the guy with the scrambled eggs on his hat.” He didn’t think that statement was all that funny. He was the kind that I could say something like that, and he wouldn’t get mad at me. I have pictures of the dead bodies around, and they were starting to smell badly at that time. He would be pointing at big holes in the ground, and he would say, “That is where you hit.” My eyes were always a little bit suspect. I didn’t see nearly as many things as he did. Mr. Cox: Did you have pictures taken of this? Capt Hagen: I have two, one with me and the Captain, then one of me with a foot on some dead body. I was going to see what was in his pockets, but then I decided I wouldn’t do that. The closer I got, I changed my mind. The one that I prize is here among the island and is just a mess, blown up all over the place, was a beat-up old Chevrolet among the rotting trees, etc. I’m climbing in the seat, the driver’s side is on the other side, but I’m sitting behind the wheel of this thing and it is full of bullets and carnage all around it. It was rather silly, but I got a copy of that. The Captain had gone off somewhere when I had that one taken. I have them somewhere, but they show the devastation. You wonder how anyone could survive the damage. Mr. Cox: If you ever want to find a home for them, I know some archives that could use them. Capt Hagen: I really don’t have any use for the pictures (See Appendages). Once you’ve shown them off, so what! I will dig them up for you. Mr. Cox: So you toured that island, and what happened then?

Παγε 35 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: Then Eniwetok and a couple more, and then finally ... Mr. Cox: Let me ask you, on those small islands, did you get to tour any of the others? Was that standard procedure more or less, so you could see how accomplished your gunners were? Capt Hagen: Not really. I think I got ashore once at Eniwetok. We had so many cases of beer onboard. We would go ashore and everyone would get one can of beer. I think we had three cases. The classic story on there at Eniwetok, we are digging out the beer to take ashore. I guess a few officers got to go with them. Well, when they started digging out the beer, one case was missing. Guess who took it? One of my gunners mates. He was a third class, but he had gotten into trouble during Guadalcanal days. He was rather special. He was a first class seaman that had been a third class gunners mate, but he had been busted. I gave him great respect because he had been blooded in Guadalcanal before he came to this ship. I promoted him to third class again until it turned out that he had swiped a case of beer and drank it all himself. Mr. Cox: Did he have to go before a Captain’s mast? Capt Hagen: Yes and I told the Captain it was terrible and I would have him check Lt Hemcheck. He was a Mustang. He had been a gunners mate in his day and he was an Ensign under me, but he supervised the gun crews. The Captain said, “Oh no Hagen, this is too serious a case for him to do it. You are going to defend this guy.” I said, “What the hell is there to defend? I hate the guy too. Bust him.” He said, “No, no. The system works.” I said, “Well who is going to be the prosecuting officer?” An Ensign communications officer that was a lawyer was. He was raising all sorts of hell asking me all of these questions. The Captain was smirking in the background. So we held the thing and the Captain finally busts him, but I had to defend him for half an hour. The Captain was able to get back at me for any sins that I might have committed. That’s the beer story. Then some of the other significant places we participated in were Samian, Tinian, and Guam. We are loaded up and

Παγε 36 οφ 50 ready for this. It was considered a major operation. Mr. Cox: The invasion? Capt Hagen: Yes of Tinian and Guam. Those are the two islands where they eventually landed B-29's that carried the bombs that could reach Tokyo. One battle group goes into the first of the two islands. They are very close together, out in the middle of nowhere. We were not part of that. So we were out running squares in the middle of the ocean for two weeks, while this operation takes place. It was called “Turkey Shoot.” Mr. Cox: Yes, the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Capt Hagen: Yes. We had no part of that; we were just there. Then after that got squared away, we were with the group that attacked Guam. Guam is our big island there, and one that we used as one of our major bases out there. So we spent ten days there. The Marines were invading it; working on it; a lot of fighting going on and a lot of resistance. So in ten days I figure that we fired around 4,000 rounds of ammunition into the bushes. Well I would fire for a while during the ten days; I would get tired and we would have one of the assistant junior officers come up, and we would be firing maybe one or two guns at a time. Mr. Cox: How did you get your targeting? Would it be from observers on the island? Capt Hagen: Yes, on the island, or up in the air. Mr. Cox: OK. Capt Hagen: At one point we would be firing off the port side, and taking on the ammunition on the starboard side. I thought that was pretty sophisticated. Mr. Cox: You would be getting it from an ammo ship? Capt Hagen: Yes. There was “no smoking” and then some. I want to say something about the smoking thing. It was a no-no to ever smoke during firing practice, general quarters, etc. During this later on battle, the major one, we were hit with three battleship shells the first thing. It rocked the hell out of the ship. It should have sunk us, but they were using armor piercing and the shells

Παγε 37 οφ 50 went right through us. My first reaction after banging my knee on a piece of metal, I was standing up, looking out the top of the director, whoever we were firing at the time (enemy ship), and the part that was holding my seat up to the proper elevation broke, snapped off, so my seat broke off and I came down and banged my knee on a piece of metal. Thank goodness I didn’t break anything. First, I got up and looked around the ship and looked around the director. The Captain was injured and I said, “You know what I need right now is a cigarette.” I felt that we survived three shells coming through and I didn’t see what one little cigarette would harm. I smoked half a pack. It was one way to help my nerves. Mr. Cox: Certainly. Capt Hagen: We were not supposed to smoke on the ships during gunnery practice. But firing at Guam, the Captain would get bored too and he would come up and stand behind...we have a range finder and that was a manual way to get ranges; the way they find the distance to the target that you are shooting at before the advent of radar. So a range finger would give you an estimation. So he would get back there and say, “I saw some movement in the trees over there, put a couple of shells over there.” Mr. Cox: Nobody was shooting at you? Capt Hagen: So we fired 4,000 rounds. I hope that we did some good. At least we stayed awake. Another classic – one day I was sort of worn out from firing day and night and the Captain was playing around with one of the assistant gunnery officers, and he wanted him to put a shell in this cave that was about 800 yards away. The shells didn’t have a chance to get together, so the shells kept missing the target. He got angry and called “general quarters.” That meant he wanted me up there to do what he said to do. Everyone went to general quarters except me, and I’m sleeping directly under the gun, gun 52, and I’m so tired I didn’t wake up. So the Captain finally had to send someone after me and I came running up the ladder asking why somebody

Παγε 38 οφ 50 didn’t wake me. The Captain wanted to know where the hell I had been. He maintained his cool, and said, “Get up there and put a shell in that cave.” I told him we were in too close. He said, “Put a shell in that damn cave.” So I went running up and said, “Well, instead of just firing one gun, we will fire all five of them.” We fired and one of them went in the cave. He said that was the kind of shooting that he liked to see. He was a grand fellow. You could kid to that extent, but never anything... Mr. Cox: Just to a certain point.

Capt Hagen: Yes. He was in command. The one time he called me and said that he wanted to talk to me. I thought, “Oh, God what have we done.” He understood that one of my men fell asleep in one of the gun turrets and his leg dropped into the gun well, and while he was sleeping whatever officer was up in the director decided to hold a drill or something and this guy let out a scream when the gun was elevated and nudged his leg. It could have crushed it, but it didn’t. This was very dangerous. The Captain told me we had to do something about this. I wanted to know how I was supposed to keep all of the people awake for four hours in the middle of the night and they were sitting around like zombies. The way we woke them up was to have a drill like that. The gun captain was supposed to see that everything was clear. The Captain was cautioning me. There was no way you could make a flock of people sitting in a gun turret for four hours in the middle of the night stay awake. He was concerned about the safety of the people. I was concerned about the safety too. That was the only time that he “cautioned” me – make sure your training is thorough enough for that, etc. OK, one instant that we got into at some point after Guam. We were assigned to go back to the Guadalcanal area. It was like old home days for me, however, the war had moved up to the Bougainville area. I can remember, we were going down there, there were four of the ships in our

Παγε 39 οφ 50 division and we were going down for anti-submarine patrol – looking for Jap submarines that were there and interfering with our supply line. I can remember, I was acting Exec. We had a change in Execs and the new one had not arrived and I was doing the navigation at night and we were going into Bougainville harbor. The Captain was in his glory here, while I am a rookie on navigating. I had a Chief Quartermaster who was quite good. We didn’t have any identifiable targets to point out. They might have had one or two lights somewhere, but it was real scary in this foreign harbor. It was probably the only one I went into and I’m doing the plotting, etc. The first thing I know I am about five minutes behind the Captain and I’m yelling at him, “Slow down, you are ahead of me. How can I make recommendations?” He said, “don’t worry about it Hagen, I know where I’m going.” He knew where he was going; he was a beautiful ship handler. Here I was, fumbling around. He finally decided just where we would anchor. When he dropped the anchor, I said, “Well, I’m only about 1,000 yards back.” Mr. Cox: You were navigating in the general area. Capt Hagen: I was rather “huffy” about it, him showing up my ignorance. He knew what he was doing. While we were down there we ran into a submarine, a Jap submarine, and all hell broke loose – four ships together. I don’t know whose turn it was first that discovered it, but somewhere along the line we had a turn and got on the target and got the OK to proceed. We made a run firing my out depth charges. I’m worried about whether the depth charges are armed and ready to go, what depth, etc., so I’m worried from the director, but the Captain is running the show from the bridge. He fired this big spread and we’ve got “probable” with enough stuff coming to the surface, and we are given at least partial credit of sinking the Jap submarine. That is the way Morrison reports it. Mr. Cox: I’m referring to something here and that was May 15th. Was that 1944?

Παγε 40 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: Yes. Mr. Cox: It says here it was the Japanese submarine I-176. Capt Hagen: Yes, and that probably says that we did sink it. We were one of a group, and Morrison says that we are probably the one that sank it, but I’m being careful and not bragging.2 Mr. Cox: Yes, this says the USS Johnston assisted in sinking it. Capt Hagen: OK. Well, that’s good. After this we helped the forces take Palau. Then the Top Brass decided to speed up the process and decided that we could go into the Phillippines next. We had the strength, and we knocked off taking other places. They gave up the thought of going into Formosa. There were a lot of bases there. Finally it was decided that we were going into the Phillippines, and that the landing would be at Leyte Gulf. We were assigned to this group of six escort carriers and I guess six destroyers. The carriers would be in a circle formation and the destroyers would be outside them, anti-submarine warfare and anti-aircraft. These were escort carriers and we were guarding. The escorts were there about 20 miles to sea off Leyte Gulf and . During this period the senior planners of the conduct of this Pacific Campaign decided to speed up activities. They decided to attack the Phillippines earlier, bypassing Formosa. We helped in the invasion of Palao and the securing of a fine harbor at Ulithi. Then, on to the Phillippines.

2“Leyte” by Samuel Morrison

Παγε 41 οφ 50 My story on the actions of the Johnston during this phase of the has been told to Sidney Shallet, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in their May 26, 1945 edition. The article was title “We Asked for the Jap Fleet – and Got It.” Mr. Shallet wrote this article after just two four-hour sessions with me. 3 I wrote a similar account entitled “It was a Torpedo Attack, Dummy!” It has never been published. The “dummy” I’m referring to were the Skipper, me, and other officers on the Bridge. (Appendage 7) A third article I dictated in Washington, D.C., when I and Ed Digardi were there after the sinking writing countless letters of regret to families of men lost in the Battle. Mr. Cox: Just tell me what went on. I would like to know your part. Capt Hagen: First the Battle of was wrapping up. Our group, Taffy 3, consisting of six CVE’s, three DD’s, and four DE’s, was just stirring around at 6:45 a.m. when we were set upon by the major Jap force consisting of four BB’s, eight CA’s, and two CL’s, and eight DD’s — MONSTROUS!! Their masts starting popping up on the horizon approaching us from the northwest at 25 mph and at an initial distance of about 25 miles. Mr. Cox: What happened next? Capt Hagen: I ran to the bridge, stood by as Captain Evans boomed out, “All hands to General Quarters. Prepare to attack major portion of the Jap fleet. All engines ahead flank. Commence making smoke and standby for a torpedo attack. Left full rudder.” Mr. Cox: Where was Evans headed? Capt Hagen: He was laying a heavy smoke screen across the rear of our formation literally changing the day into night! This act might just be the biggest secret of the

3 Saturday Evening Post article, “The Story of a Fighting Destroyer,” by Lt Robert Hagen,- USNR, dated May 16, 1945

Παγε 42 οφ 50 war! The Captain managed to hide the make-up of our group. The Japs fought us thinking we were a far more powerful force than we really were. Admiral Kurita fought us poorly. He held back his eight DD’s, and gave us room to operate reasonably effectively. Mr. Cox: Where were you at this time? Capt Hagen: I was at my battle station in the gun director, located two decks above the bridge, awaiting orders. Shortly, the skipper decided we would make our torpedo attack against a leading Jap cruiser. We were being fired upon by the CA’s and the BB’s. I was unable to fire back until the range to the Jap ships closed to 18,000 yards – the maximum range of my 5" guns (shells weighed 55 pounds; Jap ships were firing shells that weighed from 200 pounds, to Jap battleship shells weighing one ton apiece.) Jap – missing so far. So Captain closed the leading Jap CA at maximum speed. I commenced firing our Pea Shooters at 18,000 yards. When we closed to 8,000 yards on the cruiser, Evans ordered the firing of all ten of our torpedoes. Mr. Cox: You still were not hit? Capt Hagen: No, but soon. As we were fleeing, turning away, we got hit by three BB shells, followed by three CL shells – WOW! Mr. Cox: Your ship survived that? Capt Hagen: Yes, barely. I outlined the extent of our damage in my three articles. (See appendages to this oral history) We continued our fighting with the maximum speed of 17 knots, and just two of our five 5" guns in operation for the sum total of the next two hours – fighting and running. Mr. Cox: So what was the result of your torpedo attack? Capt Hagen: Morrison4 gave us credit for one torpedo hit, plus numerous 5" hits – leading to the eventual sinking of the cruiser Kumuno. Mr. Cox: How about the other ships on the screen?

4“Leyte” by Samuel Morrison

Παγε 43 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: They all performed in highly energetic fashion. Again, see my article for more details. Mr. Cox: How were the six CVE’s faring? Capt Hagen: One had been sunk, but the other five remaining carriers were making constant evasive maneuvers against the enemy fire. Mainly they were running away. The Japs were chasing them. We were between the two forces, turning to engage the closest Jap ship. The Captain would point his bow toward a threatening Jap ship. The Japs would think that we were making a torpedo attack on them and would turn away from us. Mr. Cox: How many American aircraft were in this battle? Capt Hagen: Hard to say. There were some 400 aircraft on the total of 16 CVE’s in the area. Maybe one-half of these planes got involved. The Japs had overwhelming superiority at sea, but we had absolute superiority in the air. Mr. Cox: How much did the planes help you? Capt Hagen: Let’s let the Jap Admiral tell us! Morrison’s team of writers compiled this concise response from them in Japan after the war.5

5Ibid.

Παγε 44 οφ 50 “Admiral Kurita declared after the war was over, that of the 20-30 torpedoes fired at his force before 8:30, all but one missed. That was the Johnston’s on Kumano. But it is likely that some torpedo hits were made on the Chokai and the Chikuma, of which Kurita had no report because those ships went down. In any case, it is clear that the major damage inflicted on the Japanese ships came from air bombs and aerial torpedoes. The great contribution of the surface torpedo and gunfire attacks was to force enemy ships into evasive action. That not only seriously impeded Kurita’s speed of advance, but made confusion worse confounded, so that he lost tactical control of his force and had to break off, turn north, and regroup. Kurita admitted this himself: ‘Major units were separating further all of the time because of the destroyer torpedo attack.’ His Chief of Staff wrote, ‘The enemy destroyers coordinated perfectly to cover the inferior speed of the escort carriers. They bravely launched torpedoes to interpret us, and they embarrassed us by putting up a dense smoke screen.’6

Mr. Cox: That quote that you just read – where is that from?

Capt Hagen: It is a book “Leyte” by Morrison.

Mr. Cox: Do you have any more highlights to report?

Capt Hagen: Yes, and I let Samuel Morrison and his staff relate it – they tell my story way

better than I can. The following paragraph is again quoted from Samuel B.

Morrison:

“Before Johnston check fired on one of the cruisers that sank the Gambier Bay, she observed light cruiser Yahagi and four Japanese destroyers rapidly closing the carriers. This was the one organized torpedo attack by Admiral Kurita’s destroyers. So far, as the records show, it was not even ordered by him, but was undertaken by the squadron commander on his own initiative at time 0845.

6Taken from the book “Leyte” by Samuel Morrison

Παγε 45 οφ 50

“By that time, Hoel had been abandoned well to the rear, Roberts was burning furiously, and the rest of the screen was engaging the column. Johnston signed her own death warrant by taking on the five. In the words of the Squadron Commander, ‘Enemy destroyer plunged out of smoke screen on our port bow and opened gun fire and torpedo attack on us.’ Yahagi executed right rudder, making wide evasive turn at the same time ordering destroyers to attack.

“Lt Hagen of Johnston says that the Jap destroyers were sighted at a range of about 10,000 yards and fire was immediately opened on Yahagi. The range gradually closed to about 7,000 yards. Johnston was hit several times during this encounter by 5" projectiles. About twelve hits were made on Yahagi when ‘a most amazing thing happened. She turned 90 degrees right and broke off the acts.’ Johnston immediately shifted gun fire to the first destroyer and hits were observed at a range of about 8,000 yards. ‘During firing on this second destroyer the Captain attempted to cross the ‘T’(the “T” means just that, a capital “T”) on the Jap column. However, before this was accomplished, amazingly enough, all remaining Japanese destroyers turned 90 degrees to the right and the range began to open rapidly.

“Admiral Kimura provides additional details. His sharp right turn in Yahagi was simply doctrine to allow his destroyers to launch torpedoes. Before they did so Yahagi was hit by Johnston and strafed by one of the escort carrier planes. The light cruiser fired seven torpedoes at time 0905, and at 0915 the Jap destroyers began firing theirs. Kimura states in his action report that these torpedoes reached their targets, when ‘three enemy carriers and one cruiser were enveloped in black smoke and observed to sink, one after the other.’”

Sad for us, if true; but it was not true, Commander Evans had bluffed

Admiral Kimura into a premature torpedo attack.

“Thus, one damaged destroyer, which had expended all her torpedoes and lost one engine, managed to delay, badger, and disconcert a Japanese destroyer squadron. Commander Evans

Παγε 46 οφ 50 was so elated that he could hardly talk. He strutted across the bridge and chortled, “Now I’ve seen everything.” 7

Mr. Cox: What happened next?

Capt Hagen: An avalanche of enemy shells sunk us!

Mr. Cox: How were you rescued after the sinking?

Capt Hagen: My article outlines how we endured 50 hours in the water before rescue

vessels finally picked us up. (See Appendage to this Oral History Interview)

Mr. Cox: You speak glowingly about the heroics of your commanding officer,

Commander Evans. How do you rate your own performance – as the senior

surviving officer?

Capt Hagen: I performed efficiently, consistent - I and my gunnery department managed to

comply with darn near all of Captain Evans fighting orders. Then after the

ship sunk I was assisted greatly by our wonderful Chief Bosun Mate Burnet.

Mr. Cox: What was his first name? Do you remember?

Capt Hagen: Clyde Burnet. During the 50 hours in the water, finally more than a hundred

of us survived.

Mr. Cox: You recommended Commander Evans for the Congressional Medal of

Honor. What were you awarded?

Capt Hagen: I was awarded the Navy Cross by Admiral Kincaid, the 7th Fleet Commander,

based on a recommendation from our boss, Admiral C. A. Sprague.

Mr. Cox: How about a brief report on the rest of your naval career?

7Taken from the book “Leyte” by Samuel Morrison

Παγε 47 οφ 50 Capt Hagen: After the war, I left active duty, but stayed active in the Navy Reserve. When

the Korean conflict came along I was recalled to active duty. I spent two

years (1951-1953) as the Operations Officer on a Destroyer Squadron Staff in

Korea. The flagship spent one month in Wonsan Harbor bombarding “targets

of opportunity” – reminded me of Guam, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, etc. After

the Korean stint, I returned to civilian life in New Orleans, staying active in

the Naval Reserve. I was given command of a (the USS

Woodson, DE-357) from 1958-1961. This ship was turned over to the

Reserves for this period. The crew consisted of 50 regular enlisted men and

two officers. The ship would “come to life” one weekend a month when my

Navy Reserve crew of 150 officers and men came aboard. We also went on a

two-weeks’ training cruise annually, mostly down to Guantanamo Bay. I was

relieved of command in 1961 when I was promoted to Captain and ended my

25-years service in the Naval Reserve. That was 40 years ago. Egad!

Appendages - 12 1. Letter to widow of Commander Ernest E. Evans, skipper of USS Johnston, written by Robert Hagen, dated December 18, 1944 2. Narrative by Robert Hagen written December 20, 1944 3. Memorandum to all hands of USS Johnston concerning recommendations for Purple Heart, written by Robert Hagen, dated November 24, 1944 4. Recommendation of Enlisted men for Service Schools, written by Robert Hagen, dated December 22, 1944 5. Summary of what happened during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, dated October 27, 1944, as seen by Lt P. I.. Pierson, gunnery officer of the USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) in the task force commanded by Adm C. A. F. Sprague (20 pages) 6. Saturday Evening Post article, “The Story of a Fighting Destroyer” by Lt Robert Hagen - USNR, dated May 26, 1945 7. “It was a Torpedo Attack, Dummy!” - unpublished article by Robert Hagen, undated (16 pages)

Παγε 48 οφ 50 8. “Standby for Torpedo Attack”, Article appearing in publication “Dixie”, dated October 25, 1964 9. Picture: Robert Hagen on Kwajalein, D-Day +2 10. Picture: Robert Hagen on Kwajalein, D-Day+2 11. Picture: LCDR Robert Hagen, 1952 12. Picture: Robert Hagen, San Antonio, Texas, July 9, 2003

Tapes 901a, b & c Transcribed by: Wanda Cook Hunt, TX December 28, 2003

Final editing: February 3, 2004

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