Ray Bowden Oral History Interview
BRUCE PETTY: Today is Thursday the 8th of March, the year
2000. I’m interviewing Mr. Ray Bowden in Vacaville,
California.
(break in audio)
RAY BOWDEN: I was born in Bradley, California, 1921.
BP: Where is that?
RB: The same as [Omar?].
BP: Is it up north?
RB: No, it’s down by (inaudible). It’s right where Camp
Roberts used to be. Camp Roberts is just a little bit
north of that. I was raised on a dairy farm in Fresno
County. As a side note, I was born in the same house my
dad was born in. So I’m a fourth-generation Californian.
BP: So they’ve been out here since the early days.
RB: Yeah. I went in the Navy in 1938 in Fresno. I wound up in
San Diego on the 11th of November, 1938.
BP: Is there a special reason why you went in the Navy?
RB: Well, (laughs) in a way. I’d been working out in the
field. It was hot. I had a cousin who had just come over
for a visit. He was a cook in the Navy. He was on the
(inaudible) destroyer. And it seemed so refreshing to me.
My dad had been in the Navy, too, in World War I. And so
1 it was hot out there (inaudible) working in the hayfields.
And (inaudible) my mother was standing underneath the shade of a tree. And I said, “I think I’ll join the Navy.” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “At least it’s not this hot, I don’t think.” Anyway, we went into Fresno a couple weeks later and wound up at the recruiting station. We happened to be driving by, and there it was. So we stopped and went in. That was the beginning. (inaudible) went to
San Francisco and they enlisted me in the Navy. San Diego, on Armistice Day, I was picked up by a (inaudible) chief petty officer to take me to a training station. I remember our chief petty officer was the company commander of the company I was put in. He says, “Right now, you may be cussing me and everybody else around here. But in later years, you’re going to look back and this is going to be the best time in your life (inaudible).” He was right. I wound up as a recruiting instructor (inaudible) at San
Diego. (laughs) Anyway, I went aboard the Oklahoma in
March of 1939 in San Francisco. And I was a Navy seaman for a while. Then I made coxswain. They call it third class boatswain’s mate now. I had charge of a boat. I ran a Liberty boat. Then on the 7th of December we had the duty (inaudible) I had to make a [church?] run at 8:00 a.m.
(inaudible) understand that the (inaudible) by the rudder
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(inaudible) would clean up (inaudible) Marines (inaudible)
color. And all of a sudden, I hear a machinegun and then
an airplane. I didn’t think too much of either one of
them, because the Army and the Navy had been dogfighting
for months out there. So hearing a plane dive was nothing
new. About that time the plane flew (inaudible) and I saw
meatballs on the wing. And I told my crew, “Get the hell
out of here. This ain’t no drill.” So we went to the
battle stations. And then my battle station was
(inaudible) out there in the antiaircraft battery. I got
up there over the bridge, (inaudible).
(break in audio)
RB: Ran up there and went into the (inaudible). There’s two of
us up there (inaudible). And we couldn’t do anything with
the (inaudible) because there wasn’t any power. I looked
out the door and I saw men leaving the ship. And I told my
buddy, “It’s time to go. Let’s go. Let’s get out of
here.”
BP: Had you been hit by torpedoes?
RB: Yeah, the Arizona was tied up astern of us. And they
offboarded the Tennessee. They took the first torpedo and
then we took seven more. Bang, bang, bang, bang, just
about as fast as they could drop.
BP: Seven right into the Oklahoma.
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RB: Yeah. So anyway, the ship (inaudible) didn’t have a chance
to counter-flood. It happened so fast. (inaudible) I got
down on the signal bridge and tried to go down the ladder.
It was at an angle like this. I thought about going off on
the portside. And I thought, “No, this ain’t (inaudible)
if I do.” So I started for the starboard side.
BP: It was rolling to port?
RB: It went to port. I got to the starboard side. It was
(inaudible) straight up and down. We got to the
(inaudible), standing on the side of the ship, looking down
at the bottom. And (inaudible). And (inaudible) just
looking right at it when it blew up. And it seemed to go
up in the air and up out of the water, come back down, and
sit at an angle like this.
BP: The Arizona was forward of you?
RB: It was astern of us.
BP: And you were far enough away that none of the pieces came
down on top of you.
RB: No. The (inaudible) onboard of the Arizona, they had been
doing repair work on it. The blast to the Arizona blew the
skipper of the Vestal clear off the ship. And the
(inaudible) or one of the officers, anyway, thought they
were sinking. So they ordered abandon-ship.
BP: Was the skipper killed?
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RB: No.
BP: Just blown off.
RB: These guys started leaving the ship. And this oily
apparition came back aboard ship and said, “Where the hell
do you think you’re going?” “We’re abandoning ship, Sir.”
“The hell you are. Man your battle stations. Prepare to
get underway.”
BP: Do you remember his name, that captain?
RB: No, I don’t. I think I got a picture of him around here
somewhere.
(break in audio)
RB: He got his men back to the battle stations, cutting
(inaudible) lines. And then we got off to where
(inaudible) Navy yard.
BP: Did you tell me the name of that ship (inaudible)? It was
a smaller vessel, right?
RB: Vestal.
BP: It was a fleet tug?
RB: No, I think Geronimo was the tug (inaudible).
BP: I’ll look it up.
RB: Anyway, I went on down into the water and swam over to the
island (inaudible) walked back to the quarterdeck and up
over the life lines and up to the boat deck where the
antiaircraft-fire guns were, because that was (inaudible)
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where my station was aboard ship on the Oklahoma. So
(inaudible) guys and (inaudible) gunner off the Oklahoma.
And they didn’t man the gunners. They were waiting for
electricity and air. So they (inaudible) flare. And this
one-gun crew off the Oklahoma, they pulled the guys
(inaudible) and started (inaudible) by hand. And the Navy
rammed (inaudible).
BP: What do you mean “rammed it”?
RB: Rammed the shell.
BP: By hand.
RB: Yeah. The shell from a five-inch 25 antiaircraft. It was
like a big 22 shell.
BP: And they shoved it in by hand.
RB: Yeah. They weigh about 50 to 75 pounds apiece, depending
on what kind of charge they got. Anyway, from there,
(inaudible) my battle station, which was above the bridge.
(inaudible) there and the officer in charge said,
“(inaudible) look out.” There was a lieutenant and me and
another guy over here next to me, standing there. We were
watching the planes coming in and what have you. Anyway,
the Nevada was trying to get out of the harbor. She
(inaudible) hospital (inaudible). They started trying to
sink her. (inaudible) and one of them tried to get in
(inaudible) too many (inaudible), I guess. So we saw the
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Maryland over there all by itself. Couldn’t get out.
Couldn’t move. They went for her. And they dropped a bomb
on -- I was standing there, watching. I watched the bomb
fall. It looked like it was going to land right between my
feet. All I could do was stand there and watch it. It
landed on (inaudible), which was about probably 100, 150
feet away. And the anchorage (inaudible) shrapnel all over
the place. And the officer right next to me, it killed
him. This guy over here, he got a big chunk here. And a
piece hit me here, in the chest.
BP: The left chest, under the arm?
RB: Yeah, right there.
BP: The officer to your right, who was he? Do you remember
him?
RB: His name was Crow, Lieutenant Crow.
BP: And the guy to your left who was hit?
RB: His name was -- he was off the Maryland. I don’t remember
what his name was. Lieutenant Crow was on the Maryland,
too. But it just so happens that I knew his parents. I
knew him from a picture I had seen.
BP: He got killed.
RB: Yeah.
BP: He got hit in the chest?
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RB: In the throat. And they had passed out (inaudible) bunch
of guys on there from Okinawa and different places. They
(inaudible) so they passed out (inaudible) rifle and
ammunition. (inaudible) on the Maryland and dropped this
bomb, it was going off like (inaudible) wham, wham, wham.
(inaudible) action 30-06.
BP: People were shooting at a boat (inaudible) 30-06 from World
War I?
RB: (laughs) Yeah. Anyway, about the time he fired the last
round, there was a five-inch hit that plane. And it
disintegrated, of course. We were (inaudible) “Son of a
bitch!”
BP: Everybody with rifles thought he did it, huh?
RB: Yeah. (laughs)
BP: But it was a five-inch 38.
RB: A five-inch 25. The paint locker was right below where
this bomb hit. And the painter had been ashore the night
before and had a few beers. He was sleeping it off
(laughs) on the workbench down there when that thing hit.
He come roaring up out of the hatch, wanting to know who
the son of a gun was that was making all the racket.
(inaudible) drunk and get sober right there. (laughter)
Anyway, they were trying to get guys out of the Oklahoma.
They cut a hole in one compartment. And one controversy --
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I’ve got a book on it over there -- about whether the
cutting torch used up all the oxygen in there, or whether
it was when they got through it released the pressure and
washed them up and drowned them. They were all dead when
they got in there.
(break in audio)
RB: One of the yard workers, (inaudible) story about
(inaudible).
BP: I know his name. He’s a Hawaiian, big guy who worked in
the shipyard.
RB: Yeah. He used a chipping hammer.
BP: Fabio or something like that?
RB: No. Seemed like it was (inaudible).
BP: I have the name at home.
RB: He began cutting holes in there with a chipping hammer.
Later on, they did (inaudible) I happened to be looking
across toward the island, and I saw this plane coming by.
And he come right behind the USS Curtiss, which was a
seaplane tender. And it had a deck (inaudible) fantail
that had one five-inch 50-caliber. It was (inaudible). So
they could elevate them (inaudible) degrees because of the
deck over them. Anyway, here comes this guy about 20, 25
feet over the water. They had a live target. The Navy let
him have it. They hit right where the engine and the
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fuselage comes together. The engine went on by itself.
The other one (inaudible) because that thing -- you would
see this in the cartoon, maybe. But in real life, here’s
this engine going over by itself, no airplane with it.
Just the engine. It probably went for 150 yards. And of
course the rest of the fuselage dropped off in the water.
BP: Did the pilot get out?
RB: I don’t know if he got out or not. That’s something I have
never been able to find out. Never heard whether anybody
picked him up or what. But it’s a day that I’m not going
to forget. Everything else that happened after that is
(inaudible). After the (inaudible) the Maryland out from
behind the Oklahoma and towed it over into the Navy yard
because they had to repair the (inaudible). So this buddy
and I, his name was Jones, we were on there for about a
week, I guess. And my brother was on the Oklahoma, too.
And his brother was, too.
BP: That’s when they let brothers serve together.
RB: Yeah. Anyway, we were (inaudible) one day. I got a piece
of that plane that dropped the bomb on the Maryland. I got
a piece of shrapnel in my finger. And I didn’t realize it
until the next morning, when I went like this. I went down
to the sick bay and (inaudible) two or three hundred guys
in there. The (inaudible) asked me what I needed, and I
10 told him. So he had to go and get an x-ray. He came back and took a scalpel and it was like he was cutting a watermelon. Put a bandage on it. Next morning, came back and the thing was even worse. I went back and (inaudible) said, “Can I help you?” I said, “I want to see a doctor.”
So he took some propane or whatever they use, and they froze that and lanced it, pushed all the pus out of it.
And they had me soak it in Epsom salt water and do that every day for probably three or four days and (inaudible).
So they put my arm in a sling to keep it above my heart.
We were standing there one day on the Maryland, wondering where our brothers were. So this guy came up to us and said, “Hey, you guys off the Oklahoma? You know, there’s a whole bunch of them out at [Westmont?] at the Marines.”
The Marines had a (inaudible) contingent out there. They had 25 men, I think it was. And we decided we got to get out there and see what’s going on. So we were walking down the dock, wondering what to do. Maybe OD would let us have a special boat or something so we could get out there. We looked over and saw this little whaleboat sitting there.
Just sitting there, nobody in it, no name on it or anything. So we decided, “There’s our transportation.” So
I took the (inaudible) and he took the engine. And about halfway over there, the engine quit. We didn’t check the
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fuel or anything else. (laughs) So we didn’t know if we
were out of gas or what was going on. We sat there for
about 15 minutes and finally hit the switch again. It took
off and we went on. Got over there and the Marine sentry
on the dock there at Westmont, which was an ammunition
depot, we asked him if he could tell us where the guys off
the Oklahoma were. He said, “Right back there where that
big tent is.” So we went back there and there’s a big
Turkish tent. Three cooks were cooking up food for these
guys on the field kitchen. And (laughs) they were having a
heck of a time, just finishing breakfast. It was about ten
o’clock, I guess; maybe eleven. Anyway, we walked up
there. One of the (inaudible) boatswain’s mates, he knew
us yelled to my brother. “Hey, Bowden,” he said, “look
who’s here.” He turned around and looked; him and Bobby
Jones.
BP: Bobby Jones was the brother?
RB: Bobby Jones.
BP: You said he was there with Bobby Jones, and that was the
brother of your other friend.
RB: Yeah. The other guy was Rob Jones. My brother, Al, he
dropped his tray. We run over there and got (inaudible)
other. We helped him pick up his tray. And we went over
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and sat on the grass while they ate, and talked. About two
hours went by. We decided we’d better get back.
BP: Did your brother join the Navy before you? He was an older
brother or younger?
RB: He was younger.
BP: So he came in after you.
RB: When the war started, when the Japanese hit us, I had
something like 27 days left on my enlistment.
BP: You had a two-year enlistment.
RB: Yeah. And he had just come aboard. He had about three
years and six months to go. He was still a seaman second.
Anyway, we went back to the ship. We figured we didn’t
know what kind of trouble we was going to be in when we got
back there, because we didn’t ask anybody’s permission or
anything else. We just went. Well, when we got back to
dock, there wasn’t anybody there. So we just tied it up
and went back to the ship like nothing ever happened. Next
day, we’re walking down by there and here’s this
(inaudible) working on the (inaudible). And so we walked
over and asked him what he was doing. He said around
yesterday he hadn’t got a chance to (inaudible) they called
him back to the ship. So he said he gathered up his tools
and went back to (inaudible). It was the first chance he
had to work. I said, “What would’ve happened if you didn’t
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adjust the (inaudible)?” He said, “Engine would probably
freeze up on you.” (laughter) We kind of got away with it
that time.
BP: Getting back to your brother, did he ever tell you what
happened to him? Where was he during the Oklahoma during
the attack, and how did he get off?
RB: He was a mess cook for the same division I was in. But we
(inaudible) hospital corpsman down on the second deck. He
was down there getting his mess duties cleaned up. And
when we got hit, they passed over the abandon-ship. And he
said everybody was trying to get up the ladder. He finally
made up. He did the same thing I did: slide down the side
and swim across.
BP: He ended up walking over the hull of the ship?
RB: Yeah. He just (inaudible) like this and then go down over
--
BP: Walked up the starboard side, over the keel, and down the
side.
RB: Yeah. There were some guys that tried to get out that
didn’t get out (inaudible) 14-inch porthole in the sick
bay. Some of them made it out through there. One guy got
stuck in it and they couldn’t get out. They drowned there.
He went through (inaudible). He was going through the life
line. My brother was going through the life line the same
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time I did. I just happened to look up and there he was.
So we hugged and said we wanted to know how we were doing.
We did all right.
BP: You both went in different directions.
RB: Yeah. Well, his battle station was on the antiaircraft
guns, too. So he went up there. And he was in the
ammunition train.
BP: But he didn’t go aboard the Maryland after he got off.
RB: Yeah, he did. He was on there until the hospital. They
took a whole bunch of them off the ship because they didn’t
have any place to do with them. It was just overcrowded.
BP: So you saw each other as you were abandoning the Oklahoma.
RB: No, we saw each other as we were getting aboard the
Maryland.
BP: Okay, climbing on the life line.
RB: Yeah. From there, he went to Louisville. And from there
he went to (inaudible). He finished up there.
BP: What (inaudible) was he in?
RB: (inaudible)
BP: He survived the war.
RB: Yeah, (inaudible). We went to the 50th reunion, and he
died this year. About two years after we got back from the
reunion, (inaudible) he had (inaudible) so bad he couldn’t
handle it.
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BP: He lived here locally, too?
RB: He lived up near Lassen County, Quincy. From the Maryland,
from the 19th of December I was transferred to the
receiving station for further transfer. And I was
transferred from there to (inaudible), which was
(inaudible) division that had been established. They were
still building it, in fact.
BP: It’s called the beckoning point?
RB: Beckoning point, right across from Pearl City. So I spent
a year and a couple of months there as a second-class
boatswain’s mate. And when I made second class, there
wasn’t any room for a second class. “We’re going to have
to transfer you.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll take new
construction if you’ve got it.” So they sent me orders for
new construction. (inaudible) went down there and there
was a whole bunch of small craft. And my orders were for
the USS Skenandoa, S-K-E-N-N-A-D-O-A. (inaudible) “It must
be out to sea; it can’t be here.” And I saw a P36 right
down there. Did you ever see that movie Tugboat Annie?
BP: No. YTN, you said?
RB: YPN.
BP: Thirty-six?
RB: P36. Anyway, it was [Marie?] [Brest?] and (inaudible) that
made it. I saw it maybe in 1930. It was a steamer at the
16
time. (inaudible) same ship. But they had to take the
(inaudible) out and put in a 500-horsepower diesel.
BP: When was it built, 1919 or something?
RB: About 1900.
BP: (laughs)
RB: It was 90 feet long, 500-horsepower engine. Had a
(inaudible) of about (inaudible), something like that.
Maybe 25. Our top speed was take those 10,000-pound PAD
(inaudible).
BP: TAD? What does that stand for?
RB: They made arrangements to haul aircraft from Pacific
airbases, is what it means, from Midway to Enewetak or
wherever.
BP: For hauling aircraft so they wouldn’t have to fly them.
RB: Yeah. They were 110 feet long and about 40 feet wide. And
they weighed 10,000 tons. They filled those things up to
where there was six inches (inaudible). We could move that
thing at about four knots. (inaudible) harbor one day. We
had the barge short-hauled. And there was a storm about to
come in. We passed the entrance three times (inaudible)
running high (inaudible) harbor in the [trough?].
(inaudible) hit that barge and (inaudible) 150 yards of
wire like nobody (inaudible) being towed. (laughter)
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BP: Didn’t anybody think it might be wiser to wait till that
storm passed before --
RB: Well, we finally got out of the harbor. As soon as we got
out of the harbor, (inaudible). We went on ahead and took
our barge. It was headed for Hilo and from Hilo we took a
barge to (inaudible).
BP: What was on the barge?
RB: They were supplies (inaudible) was about (inaudible) water.
BP: Just the northern Hawaiian Islands, basically. One of the
northernmost.
RB: Right. (inaudible) little bit more, and it was an
emergency landing field. And they had an old Navy
transport tied up at the dock. And that was the
(inaudible).
BP: Japanese never attacked it?
RB: No. But they had gunnery station (inaudible) Midway. And
they were supposed to report the fleet (inaudible) ships
were in the vicinity or not. Anyway, (inaudible) had a
fishing line out.
BP: At four knots, I guess you could.
RB: Yeah. (laughs) (inaudible) this fishing line hit me on the
chin. (inaudible) realized one of them got a fish on that
thing. So I yelled at somebody and they grabbed it and
pulled it in. (inaudible) engine down and it was one of
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those porpoise fish. Dolphin. So we had fish dinner for
(inaudible) that I can remember but one time before. Just
before we caught that fish, it was albatross (inaudible).
Course (inaudible) couldn’t help but think about
(inaudible) and albatross. Anyway, from there, the rest of
the trip, was nothing to it. Eventually, I decided that I
wanted to get back into action. So I requested some new
instruction. They sent me to Takoma, Washington.
(inaudible) the USS (inaudible) in commission there.
BP: That was a tender of some sort?
RB: That was an escort carrier.
BP: I’ll have to look that up. Commencement Bay. You remember
its number?
RB: I don’t remember its number. They had the Block Island
Commencement Bay and one other of them were sister ships.
BP: CBE?
RB: Yeah, escort. Anyway, head down to San Diego. We were
going to train Marines to take off and land on carriers.
There was an (inaudible) outfit (inaudible) exactly. It
was (inaudible) they needed a chief boatswain’s mate on the
USS Santee, so I put in for it.
BP: What year?
RB: It was January or February of 1945.
BP: That late in the war?
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RB: Yeah.
BP: So you spent all that time at Pearl and on these boats. So
you spent a good part of the war right there at Pearl
Harbor, then.
RB: Yeah. And I went from there to -- I was on the
Commencement Bay for transport from San Diego to Pearl
Harbor.
BP: You were on the Commencement Bay for only a couple months?
RB: Yeah, from December ’44 until February of ’45. We got up
to Pearl Harbor and got aboard the Santee. From there we
went to a staging area up at Ulithi.
BP: This is after the Santee had been hit by kamikaze. Were
you replacing somebody who was killed or wounded?
RB: There was this photographer’s mate. Yeah, he’d been on
there when it was hit. They hit at Leyte. It was what
they call a one-two punch. (inaudible) kamikaze at the
same time. And (inaudible). And from there we went out to
Okinawa. It was seven CPEs. Block Island was the
flagship. Our main object was to (inaudible) a little
island off of (inaudible).
BP: Just west of Okinawa, right?
RB: Yeah.
BP: So you’re in Ulithi with all these other carrier ships.
The Randolph was there when you were there?
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RB: Yeah. Every morning, every airport we had, just about, off
seven carriers -- next morning, (inaudible) torpedo plane,
they’re going to make a recon, go out, and take pictures.
BP: Who would? Your friend?
RB: (inaudible) go out and take pictures and come back in.
Didn’t look like anything ever happened.
BP: On Ie Shima, you mean?
RB: Yeah. (inaudible) and we did that March, April, May, June,
July, August... We went into Kerama Retto. That was a
base. We had that for a base. Had supply ships
(inaudible). We went in to pick up some supplies. Our
sister ship, Sagamont Bay, had been in there. And the
(inaudible) on deck and got out of there. (inaudible)
kamikaze hit them.
BP: I remember that.
RB: And it blew the elevator out of the shaft and everything,
just about. They weren’t able to fix it, but it 24 hours
or about a week they had to be back in the States, anyway.
We were sitting in there, getting all the supplies. A red
alert went up, and there was two kamikazes out there. The
St. George was sitting over there, and we were sitting over
here like this. So then after they circled around, one of
them went off into the same (inaudible).
BP: St. George, was that a submarine tender?
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RB: That was a tender, (inaudible).
BP: Was it a seaplane tender, or what?
RB: No.
BP: Astoria tender?
RB: It was a flagship of the base.
BP: Henry Fonda was there when it got hit?
RB: Yeah. Anyway, we were sitting there. Our guns were 40-
millimeters. We was waiting there for that guy to get in
range. Once he got in range, we had a Navy limit of two
seconds or something like that to get rid of him. We’re
sitting there waiting for him to come in. Here comes this
-- I never seen (inaudible) all my life. Brand new
(inaudible) tin can, (inaudible) tin can come roaring into
the harbor and slam the brakes on. And bam-bam. That was
the end of it.
BP: With the five-inch 38.
RB: Yeah.
BP: They just pulled in and shot it down with a couple shots.
RB: Yeah. (inaudible)
BP: Oh, the proximity shells.
RB: Yeah.
BP: Just came roaring in, fired off a couple rounds, and run
him into the ground.
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RB: Yeah. I could still see (inaudible) coming in with the
(inaudible) their teeth, as they call it. The white
(inaudible) coming in, backing down, and firing those two
guns before they fired. I think they had four mounts to
the side: one forward and one aft, and two mounts on either
side. It was twin mounts.
BP: Twin five-inch 38s.
RB: Yeah, they came in and fired two of the (inaudible).
BP: I interviewed a guy here locally in (inaudible) valley. He
was on an LSD. And they were in a Kerama Retto and he was
on --
(break in audio)
RB: We were expecting launchers or LST or something would load
the ammunition for us. And this boat (inaudible)
ammunition ships. Got about halfway across the harbor and
it exploded.
BP: You don’t know why?
RB: They never figured out why. They think that maybe it
happened before. And what had happened --
(break in audio)
RB: The idea was that that bow was break. And of course, the
reaction of the sulfur and the acid on the bow would
(inaudible) to set it off.
BP: Are you suggesting somebody might have committed sabotage?
23
RB: Yeah, that’s what they thought.
BP: There was a huge ammunition ship that was over in the
Admirals or something, (inaudible) Bay or something. The
whole ship blew. Everyone was killed except for a landing
party.
RB: Yeah. There was one in -- you ever see Victory at Sea?
They showed (inaudible) ship (inaudible).
BP: It was something Bay, wasn’t it?
RB: Yeah, I don’t remember the name of it.
BP: I interviewed somebody who watched that ship blow up. I
thought it was over in Manus Island or something in the
Admiralties. And the only people who survived were the
working party.
RB: Yeah.
BP: But this was an LCI or something coming to your ship with
ammunition, and it blew up?
RB: Yeah.
BP: Who suspected that it might have been sabotage, and who
would’ve done it?
RB: Well, that was speculation. They claimed that it had to
happen before. But it was (inaudible) that nothing
happened. Nobody got hurt or anything like that.
BP: But people on that boat got hurt.
24
RB: Oh, yeah. Three or four guys that was on crew there, none
of them made it off of there.
BP: Where do we go from here?
RB: Well, then comes up the end of the war. And on the 14th or
15th of August we had orders to go to (inaudible) for a
week (inaudible). The Seabees had set up a place over
there. They had a couple of (inaudible) place where you
could cool your (inaudible) off and different things like
that. It wasn’t much of anything, but it gave you a chance
to get off the ship.
BP: I remember that from Vietnam. (laughs)
RB: Anyway, on the 15th, the [TBS?] come over that the war was
over. And the admiral said every ship carried so much beer
and so much soap (inaudible) aboard ship (inaudible) taken
ashore. (inaudible) authorize the captain of every ship
would give each man two bottles of beer. So that was kind
of a (inaudible) it’s like you’re expecting something to
happen and it doesn’t happen. Now what do I do? The war
was over. It took a little while to get back into
peacetime routine, scrubbing down the decks in the morning
and what have you. And every time (inaudible) but usually
went to breakfast or something like that.
BP: Did you get to go to Japan at all after --
RB: I never got there, no.
25
BP: What happened to the Santee?
RB: The Santee? My dad was working as a foreman at a Naval
supply depot in Oakland. And he told me that they had
(inaudible) USS Santee (inaudible) helicopter ship after
the war. But I had (inaudible) been in the Navy.
BP: Nineteen thirty-nine to...?
RB: Nineteen-forty. We went out to Hawaii in 1940. We were
supposed to (inaudible) for two weeks and maneuver
(inaudible) out there and spend two weeks for (inaudible)
and come back. (inaudible) so I had all the points I had
accumulated. I had something like 250 or 300. It was a
whole bunch of them.
BP: You were a chief by then, right?
RB: Yeah. And they gave you so many points every year you were
overseas. Pearl Harbor was considered overseas. So I went
back to the States (inaudible) first ship (inaudible) home.
I was sent to (inaudible) transfer home. And I was the
first man off the ship; me and a guy by the name of
[Godsell?]. He was a [storekeeper?]. He was a chief
storekeeper. He had (inaudible) he had something like 24
when the war started. Of course, the deal was there that
you could reenlist and they’d paid you a dollar (inaudible)
for nothing. So (inaudible) reenlisted. Then we got to
(inaudible), and I was there for two weeks. Of course,
26
they say everybody was wounded, walking wounded. They sent
them home first. And I was one of the first ones to go.
BP: You said you were wounded there. You talked about the
wound in your finger, but what happened there?
RB: This, it must’ve cracked a rib, because for almost a year
that was tender. And I went to the sick bay once and told
them that it was sore there. And they (inaudible) around,
couldn’t find anything, so they said, “Well, you probably
just bumped it or something.”
BP: There’s no shrapnel in there.
RB: No. It hit me real hard.
BP: Knocked you out?
RB: It spun me around.
BP: So whatever it was, it was a glancing thing.
RB: Yeah, it just hit and broke the skin. I don’t know how big
the piece was.
BP: And you had a piece of shrapnel in your finger.
RB: Yeah. And (inaudible) was just only a sliver.
BP: So you got out in ’45, ’46, or what?
RB: I got out in 1947.
BP: You stayed in that long?
RB: Yeah. I got out because my folks needed help. So I got
out (inaudible).
BP: So you went back to work on the farm?
27
RB: Well, no. They were living in San Francisco at the time.
BP: They had left the farm. Doing what? Oh, he was working
for the Naval --
RB: Yeah.
BP: They needed help for health reasons or business?
RB: Well, they had a service station. And they needed some
help with that. And my mother was asthmatic, and she
wasn’t able to do a lot of things. So Dad was working 24
hours a day, almost. So...
BP: What did you do as a civilian before you retired?
RB: After I retired here, I was a building contractor right
here. I’d been a carpenter up until -- I was in Haywood.
And they put a moratorium on building. And they were doing
(inaudible) up here, so they needed them up here.
BP: What year was that?
RB: That was in 1971. My first wife and I, we had six kids.
And I worked down in Los Angeles for a trucking company.
And I drove trucks for a while. And I went up as
dispatcher. And then I was terminal manager. And things
blew up in my face, so I (inaudible) up here. The
(inaudible) I’m married to now, I’ve been married 30 years.
BP: What happened to your first wife? Did she die?
RB: She lives down in Fresno.
BP: Oh, she’s still alive?
28
RB: Yeah.
BP: So you retired here when?
RB: The second time I retired was December of this year.
BP: So you’ve been working all this time. Let me just go back
a little bit. Do you remember some names, like the captain
of the Oklahoma?
RB: The captain of the Oklahoma was named Foy, F-O-Y.
BP: Do you know his first name? I suppose I could find it.
RB: I don’t remember what his first name was.
BP: Do you remember the executive officer? Anybody else that
stands out in your memory?
RB: First lieutenant was [Slauson?].
BP: First name?
RB: I don’t remember what his first name was. My (inaudible)
officer was George [Stalling?]. (inaudible) lieutenant.
And there was a junior (inaudible). His name was Bezey.
B-E-Z-E-Y, I believe it was.
BP: All these people survived the attack?
RB: So far. But I know (inaudible) Captain Foy was going to
get another crew together for the Oklahoma City (inaudible)
but he passed away, I guess.
BP: He died during the war?
RB: Yeah.
BP: He died in combat or just died of illness?
29
RB: I don’t know. I just read that he passed away.
BP: Anybody else special that you remember from the Oklahoma?
RB: There was a first-class boatswain’s mate named Durlaus, D-
U-R-L-A-U-S. Called him (inaudible).
BP: What’s special about him?
RB: Another first-class boatswain’s mate was [Hilton?]. And
gunner’s mate named [Macbeth?].
BP: They all survive?
RB: Yeah. Fact, Macbeth was on the Oklahoma (inaudible)
Visalia (inaudible) because if it is, he’d be about 90
years old.
BP: I’ll check and see.
RB: I’ve written to him, but I’ve never gotten an answer. Then
there was Paul [Grudier?]. He lives down in Arizona. He
was a signalman. And Kramer, he was a seaman (inaudible).
He wrote a book about his experiences. He was trapped down
below decks, him and 14 other guys, on the number-four
turret. And they were in there for something like 24 hours
before the (inaudible) crew come in and cut a hole through
there. Imagine what that must have been like. Like you
say, you don’t know what black is. (laughs)
BP: You were not involved at all in the effort to try to get
people out of the Oklahoma after that?
RB: I was a diver for a while.
30
BP: In Pearl Harbor?
RB: Yeah.
BP: Maybe you can tell us about that. They taught you to dive
after the attack?
RB: No, back in (inaudible). They used divers to -- they’d
drill a hole in the bottom of (inaudible). And they’d put
this glass tube about so big around that was about 20 to 25
feet long down in the hole and put this instrument down in
there. And the diver had to go down and put a cap on it.
BP: When did you first get your diving training?
RB: At (inaudible).
BP: Right then, at that point. Okay.
RB: I used to have to go down and [pull grass?]. The Navy had
shallow water (inaudible) but it would just (inaudible).
You couldn’t bend over. (inaudible) if you want to get
down there (inaudible). Well, it wasn’t long -- about the
summer of that year, Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear.
So our chief diver was a chief gunner’s mate named
[Forson?]. And he took a (inaudible) 16 gasmask and
modified it with a (inaudible) where the diaphragm was. I
don’t know how he did it. But he’d take the tank off the
back and take tubes and hook them to a belt, an ammunition
belt (inaudible). Then the hose from the compressor,
hooked that up to those two hoses they had.
31
BP: And the compressor was on the surface.
RB: Yeah.
BP: And they were pumping air down from the surface to you.
RB: Yeah. You could go down about 50 feet with that. And
(inaudible) what have you. Put on a pair of shorts and
sneakers and... (laughs) One of the diver’s, his name was
[Swindler?]. They took him over to where the old
(inaudible) and the Helena had been tied up. I forget what
it was that they had to dive for. Might have just been
(inaudible) stuff; I don’t know. But anyway, Swindler was
a first-class boatswain’s mate. He’d been down for quite a
while. He was a master diver. But (inaudible) go down in
full dress. But (inaudible) put his shoes on. (inaudible)
don’t see any reason why you had to put shoes on.
(inaudible) only about (inaudible) feet deep, but it was
muddy. Anyway, what happened, soon as he hit the water, he
turned upside down because he was heavier on top than he
was on the bottom.
BP: Oh, he needed weighted shoes.
RB: Yeah. And those shoes weighed (inaudible) pounds apiece.
They keep you upright.
BP: He was a master diver, right? Didn’t he know better?
RB: He should’ve known better. Anyway, Forson told him, “Hey,
I’ll throw you some shoes. You can put them on and come
32
back up.” (laughs) (inaudible) brought him back aboard the
barge. There was two (inaudible) like that, at which point
they had to go down and (inaudible) because of the soft
mud. You could be down 20 feet in the mud and not realize
it. And you try to get up, and you won’t (inaudible)
yourself out. Anyway, I made one dive on the Oklahoma.
BP: For what reason?
RB: There were divers going down there to assess things.
(inaudible) did was help close the water-tight doors and
(inaudible) and what have you. (inaudible) but I only made
one dive. And when they got ready to raise it, they had to
go down (inaudible). I don’t remember how many there was,
but (inaudible) that they (inaudible) island there. They
had (inaudible) horsepower motor on each one of them. And
they (inaudible) about a (inaudible) how long it took them
to do that, but...
(break in audio)
RB: Anyway, I saw the planes (inaudible) over. And I saw the
meatballs on the wings. And I told my crew to get the hell
out of there. So I climbed the ladder up to the boat boom,
which the boats were all tied to. It was a boom that comes
out off the side of the ship. And when we’re at sea, it
rigged in. But anyway, climbed up there. And by the time
I had got to the main deck of the ship, we’d already taken
33
one torpedo. So from there, I had to run from here up to
here and up here.
BP: You ran from the after part of the ship to the forward part
of the ship and then up to the gun director.
RB: Yeah. And by the time I got up there, we’d taken all the
torpedoes. And we were beginning to roll pretty fast. And
of course, we couldn’t operate the electric, because there
was no power. I looked out the door and I saw men leaving
the ship. They had passed the word to abandon ship, but we
couldn’t hear it up there. And so I was told the
boatswain’s mate had passed the word to “abandon ship, and
this is no shit.” That’s what he said. His name was
Simmons. He was the boatswain’s mate of the watch. So
anyway, I got up there and we opened the door and look up
and see these guys leaving. I told my buddy, Bobby, “Let’s
get the hell out of here.” So we left. And as we were
leaving, I saw one of my crew off the boat -- his name was
West -- lying there in the gutter. He had been hit with a
strafing bullet. And so I went back down the ladder to the
signal bridge, which was the next-lowest bridge. And then
from there I got onto the boat deck, and from the boat deck
up to the starboard side, off the ship.
BP: What happened to West?
RB: He was dead.
34
BP: Hit in the leg? He died?
RB: No, he got hit by either shrapnel or a strafing bullet.
And he got hit somewhere. I didn’t know where he got hit.
But he was dead.
BP: So we’ve got that straightened out, you think? That part?
RB: I think so.
(break in audio)
RB: Those torpedoes they were firing -- I (inaudible) one of
them by the [radio?] box. I could hear the ping-ping-ping,
these bullets hitting and ricocheting. And there was some
guys on their battle station, but they couldn’t do anything
because there wasn’t any power or anything. And the radio
boxes were all locked because the Army said, “We protect
you. You don’t need the ammunition.” So they put padlocks
on them.
BP: So you couldn’t even get to the ammunition.
RB: No. So the boatswain of the ship, he got a hammer and he
broke all the locks off. He got a Congressional Medal of
Honor for that.
BP: This is the boatswain that you just mentioned?
RB: No, this was a warrant officer.
BP: The Army told you, you couldn’t?
RB: Yeah. The military forces aren’t like they are now, where
they worked together. In those days, they was two separate
35
things. They were to protect us while we were in port.
And we had about 400 more guns than they had, so...
(break in audio)
RB: -- and climbed up on the blister and walked back towards
the quarterdeck. And as I climbed through the life line,
here was my brother, coming through.
(break in audio)
RB: Here are these guys, standing around, waiting for power on
their guns. The guys off the Oklahoma, they threw one crew
(inaudible) gun and got on there themselves and started
ramming by hand.
BP: The gun crews from the Maryland (overlapping dialog;
inaudible) --
RB: Yeah. And then they’re yelling at the ammunition train,
“Get the ammunition moving. Move! Get it done. Get it up
here.” And they rammed about 30 rounds through that one
gun that I know of.
BP: By hand. That was the five-inch 25.
RB: Yeah. They wore [blisterings?] on their hands and also
[blistered?] the paint of the gun. That’s how fast they
were. They were really putting them through.
BP: Did they shoot any planes down?
RB: I don’t know. Nobody really knew who hit what, because
there were guns firing from every direction.
36
(break in audio)
RB: (inaudible) probably (inaudible) I guess, JG. Everybody
said he got the Congressional Medal of Honor because he was
down in one of the compartments and he got everybody out of
there before he got out. When it came his time, it was too
late. Anyway, in that book I got there, he got the Navy
Cross, not the Congressional Medal of Honor. But everybody
thought he should’ve have gotten the medal.
BP: His name is [Schmitt?]?
RB: Yeah.
BP: He was able to get a bunch of people out, but by the time
his turn came on, it was too late. He died there.
RB: Yeah.
(break in audio)
RB: His (inaudible) services were always Catholic. And the
Protestants and the Lutherans had to go to some other ship
or station or ashore, one of the two, to go to their
services. And that was (inaudible) went at 0800 or shortly
after (inaudible) gangway to pick up the (inaudible) church
party and take them to wherever they were going.
(break in audio)
RB: Everybody was kind of standing around looking at each
other. “What are we going to do now?” And they had passed
37
out sandwiches, tongue sandwiches, which I didn’t care for
too much about. But I ate two of them that day.
BP: Cow tongue?
RB: Yeah.
BP: Cow tongue sandwiches.
RB: (laughs) Anyway, about two o’clock that afternoon, they
passed the word over the loudspeakers as kind of a morale-
booster, that one of our (inaudible) had caught up with
them and sunk them (inaudible) ships and shot down some
planes (inaudible) a bunch of (inaudible). Never happened.
BP: At two o’clock, did you think they were going to come back
and hit you again?
RB: Yeah, we did. We expected it, because the strategy that
they had -- and everybody that knows anything about
strategy says that what they did up at that point was
great. But they were kind of like the (inaudible) he
wanted to get the hell out of there. That’s the way -- I
can’t remember what his name was, but --
BP: Admiral Nagumo. He died on Saipan, by the way.
RB: Yeah. He wanted to get out of there, whereas the flight
commander wanted to return and get our fuel supply. And if
he’d done that, it’d have been goodbye, baby.
BP: How were you feeling? Were you too busy to be scared? And
when it was over, were you nervous or mad or excited?
38
RB: Here was all of this activity. You were too busy to be
scared. You knew what you had to do. You’d been drilled
and drilled and drilled and drilled. It was almost
automatic. And then the pressure was taken off. I guess
it felt like a little bit it let the air out of it; I don’t
know.
BP: Would you say you were more scared after it was over than
when it was happening?
RB: Oh, yeah.
BP: Were you never scared? Were you just mad?
RB: No, it didn’t bother me that way. I don’t think it
bothered anybody that way. Some guys had the shakes,
but... It’s just kind of a numb feeling, I think, would
probably be the word, like a (inaudible) doesn’t have
anything to do. What are you going to do next? What are
you going to do now? And then the officers in charge, they
were trying to make it easier on us.
BP: How so?
RB: (inaudible) on Sunday and we could sleep if we had a place
to sleep and do whatever we wanted to, except go ashore.
BP: For the rest of the day.
RB: Yeah.
BP: How could you sleep with all those fires and people still
trapped in the ship?
39
RB: Some people could. There’s people that could sleep on an
anchor. (laughter)
BP: I remember sleeping on a stack of bombs a couple times, I
was so tired.
RB: (laughs)
BP: Anything else you want to add or say to that?
RB: There’s probably a bit more, but --
END OF AUDIO FILE
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