Uss Arizona Quotes

Another episode startled Trump’s advisers on the Asia trip. As the president and his entourage embarked on the journey, they stopped in Hawaii on November 3 to break up the long flight and allow Air Force One to refuel. White House aides arranged for the president and first lady to make a somber pilgrimage so many of their predecessors had made: to visit Pearl Harbor and honor the twenty-three hundred American sailors, soldiers, and marines who lost their lives there. The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just off the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff. Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him. “He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser. Trump’s lack of basic historical knowledge surprised some foreign leaders as well. When he met with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations back in September 2017, Trump complimented him on the spectacular Bastille Day military parade they had attended together that summer in Paris. Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.” A senior European official observed, “He’s totally ignorant of everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested.” Tillerson developed a polite and self-effacing way to manage the gaps in Trump’s knowledge. If he saw the president was completely lost in the conversation with a foreign leader, other advisers noticed, the secretary of state would step in to ask a question. As Tillerson lodged his question, he would reframe the topic by explaining some of the basics at issue, giving Trump a little time to think. Over time, the president developed a tell that he would use to get out of a sticky conversation in which a world leader mentioned a topic that was totally foreign or unrecognizable to him. He would turn to McMaster, Tillerson

Doggie Rayl was a perfectionist, and a man lucky to be alive to make the trip to the North Pole. Rayl was a signalman aboard the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was sleeping topside to escape the heat below when the Japanese attacked. The explosions blew him overboard, and he managed to scramble to another ship. That is how he survived the Arizona’s sinking.

Despite years of war-gaming otherwise, there was a mindset that any threat to Hawaii was likely to come out of the west or southwest from the general direction of Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands. Submarines were judged a significant threat, and Kimmel told Stark that he had “issued orders to the Pacific Fleet to depth bomb all submarine contacts in the Oahu operating area.

Esther Ross’s moment was at hand. Despite the time-honored tradition of christening ships with champagne, Esther swung two bottles suspended from the vessel by a long cord and wrapped in red, white, and blue ribbons. One was indeed the traditional bottle of champagne—described by the New York Times as “American champagne from Ohio”—but the other was “a quart of the first water that flowed over Roosevelt Dam in Arizona.” As the bottles broke against the starboard bow, Esther cried out, “I name thee Arizona!

Later, with the benefit of hindsight, some would contend that this unusual use of water damned the ship, but at the time, Arizona was a dry state and, according to the Times, “the ‘teetotalers’ and the rest of the Arizonians demanded that the Arizona be named with water as well as wine.” As the ship slid faster and faster down the ways, one estimate claimed it bested fifteen knots by the time it hit the water of the East River and floated off in the direction of the Williamsburg Bridge. A flotilla of tugs swarmed around the hull and shepherded it to a dock in the Navy Yard for completion.2 Afterward, before an invited luncheon crowd of nine hundred guests, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels expounded at length on the role of the United States Navy on the global stage. When it was her turn to say a few words, Esther Ross came right to the point: “Mr. Secretary, friends,” she told Daniels and those seated before her, “this is the proudest day of my life, because I have christened the largest battleship in the world with the name of the greatest state in the union.”3

Few could dispute Esther Ross’s claim that the Arizona was a cutting-edge weapon of its day. The behemoth was built to project American power and counter any aggressor on the high seas. Battleships made completely of steel were themselves relatively new. America’s earliest were the Texas and the Maine, commissioned within a month of each other in 1895. Barely over three hundred feet in length and displacing only sixty-seven hundred tons, they in retrospect have been termed coastal defense battleships or, in the case of the Maine, a mere armored cruiser. The Maine blew up under mysterious circumstances in Havana Harbor, Cuba, in February 1898, and its sinking became a rallying cry during the subsequent Spanish-American War. Short-lived though the war was, it underscored the importance of a battleship Navy. In one storied episode, the two-year-old battleship Oregon raced from the Pacific coast of California all the way around Cape Horn and into the Atlantic to take part in the Battle of Santiago off Cuba. It was a bold display of sea power, but the roundabout nature of the voyage set thirty-nine-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt to thinking about the need for a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. By 1900, the United States Navy floated five battleships and had seven more under construction. Beginning with the Indiana (BB-1), commissioned at the end of 1895, they were each given the designation “BB” for battleship and a number, usually in chronological order from the date when their keels were laid down. Save for the anomaly of the Kearsarge (BB-5), all bore the names of states.

The prescient assistant secretary of the Navy was now president of the United States, and in December 1907, Theodore Roosevelt dispatched a fleet of sixteen battleships, painted white for peace and dubbed the Great White Fleet, on a multiyear voyage around the world to underscore America’s international interests and demonstrate its global reach. Most of these battleships were more than four hundred feet in length and displaced at least twice the tonnage of the Maine.

Many of the men who would command ships and fleets in years to come gained experience serving as young officers aboard the giants of the Great White Fleet. Among these newly minted lieutenants and ensigns were Husband E. Kimmel on Georgia (BB-15), Isaac C. Kidd on New Jersey (BB-16), William F. Halsey, Jr., on Kansas (BB-21), and Harold R. Stark and Raymond A. Spruance on Minnesota (BB-22).

Even as this impressive armada returned to Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1909, its battleships were being surpassed by increasingly larger and heavier dreadnoughts packing ever more firepower. In 1916 alone, the United States Navy commissioned four newcomers: Nevada (BB-36) and Oklahoma (BB-37), measuring 583 feet in length and carrying ten fourteen-inch guns in two triple and two twin turrets, and Pennsylvania (BB-38) and Arizona (BB-39), 608 feet in length and mounting twelve fourteen-inch guns in four turrets of three each. Ships are usually built in classes of comparable specifications named after the lead ship, even if there are only two ships in the class. Hence, the Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class battleship. While there were small differences among the classes, pre–World War II battleships, beginning with Nevada, were “standard-type,” with generally the same top speed (21 knots), turning radius (700 yards), and armor, to facilitate steaming together. Arizona’s commissioning—its official acceptance into active service—occurred in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on October 17, 1916. Europe had been at war for two years, and it looked as if the United States would soon enter the conflict. The new ship and its sister, Pennsylvania, were, the New York Times reported, the “most powerful fighting craft afloat.” From keel laying to commissioning, Arizona’s construction had taken two and one-half years and cost $16 million (comparable to $369,000,000 in 2017 purchasing power). An initial complement of 1,034 officers and men took up their stations onboard.

The Arizona spent the ensuing years of World War I deployed along the Atlantic coast, mostly on training missions. After the Armistice in November 1918, Arizona crossed the Atlantic to England and then joined the flotilla of warships escorting President Woodrow Wilson to peace talks in France. A second Atlantic voyage to France and across the Mediterranean followed. By 1921, Arizona had made its first transit of the Panama Canal and first crossing of the equator, and came to be home-ported in San Pedro, California, not yet engulfed by greater Los Angeles. High morale and esprit de corps are essential components in any military command, but particularly so aboard ships at sea. BB-39’s can-do motto quickly became “At ’em Arizona” and a newsletter with that name—at first crudely typed but increasingly polished as the years went by—was, as its masthead proudly proclaimed, “Published daily aboard the U.S.S. Arizona wherever she may be.”6

Meanwhile, ever more battleships, most laid down amid the fury of World War I, were commissioned into active service. The Tennessee-class of Tennessee (BB-43) and California (BB-44) joined the fleet by the end of 1921, as did the Maryland (BB-46), which managed to be completed before the lead ship of her Colorado-class, the first class to mount sixteen-inch guns. Colorado (BB-45) and West Virginia (BB-48) were commissioned during 1923. Eight of these battleships, Nevada and Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Arizona, Tennessee and California, Maryland and West Virginia—all built within a decade of one another—would forever be linked by the events of December 7, 1941. Colorado escaped the date only because it was undergoing an overhaul in the Bremerton Navy Yard in Washington State.

The fourth member of the Colorado-class was never completed because the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 brought new battleship construction worldwide to a halt. The World War I victors agreed to limit capital ship construction and scrap certain existing vessels to result in a 5:5:3 ratio among the three major naval powers of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Signatories pledged to honor a ten-year moratorium on capital ship construction and guarantee ships would not exceed thirty-five thousand tons or carry armaments larger than sixteen-inch guns. The treaty also contained a non-fortification clause aimed at American and Japanese intentions across the broad reaches of the Pacific. Beyond what the United States might undertake in Hawaii or what Japan might do in its home islands, the signatories agreed not to fortify bases on their island possessions, including Japan’s Caroline and Marshall Islands, recently won from Germany, and such American outposts as Wake, Guam, and most important, the Philippines. Whether Japan would honor this commitment was a matter of considerable debate. Franklin Roosevelt, out of the public eye while recovering from polio, asked in an article, “Shall We Trust Japan?” Citing Japan’s participation in the Washington Naval Treaty and noting there was “enough commercial room” in the Pacific “for both Japan and us well into the indefinite future,” Roosevelt answered with an optimistic yes.7 The end result was that America honored its treaty commitment and built no new battleships between commissioning the West Virginia in 1923 and the North Carolina (BB-55) in 1941. This left the Arizona and its sisters the undisputed, though aging, queens of the seas on the American side during the latter 1920s and throughout the 1930s. But even queens require an occasional facelift, and from May 1929 to March 1931, Arizona underwent a twenty-two-month modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard.

The thickness of the armor decking was increased by 1.75 inches, and giant torpedo bulges, or blisters, were added below the waterline on the exterior of each side of the hull. In theory, these bulges provided some measure of protection from torpedoes or near-miss bombs. They were filled with air in the outer half and water in the half next to the hull, and were designed to absorb the shock of an explosion and dissipate potential damage to the ship. Bulkheads bisecting the bulge limited flooding and damage to a particular section. All this meant more weight and new boilers and turbines were also installed to keep up Arizona’s speed, which peaked at 20.7 knots (23.8 mph) during post-overhaul sea trials. Returned to full commission on March 1, 1931, Arizona embarked President Herbert Hoover from Hampton Roads, Virginia, for a ten-day tour of the Caribbean, calling at Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It was the sort of low-key inspection of naval operations combined with a warm respite from wintry Washington that American presidents happily undertook in those years. Franklin Roosevelt would soon become a master of it.

Early the following year, Arizona steamed from its home port at San Pedro to Hawaii to participate in Army-Navy Grand Joint Exercise No. 4. It was a mouthful of a name for a round of war games that simulated an attack on Oahu from “enemy” aircraft carriers lurking to the north. Near sunrise on February 7, 1932, the first strike of carrier planes caught Army Air Corps bases by surprise. A second wave achieved similar results after slow-to-respond Army pilots landed for refueling and breakfast. In the after-action critique, the Army protested that the Navy’s attack at daybreak on a Sunday morning, while technically permitted under the rules, was a dirty trick.8 A few weeks later, on March 2, Arizona entered Pearl Harbor for the first time. Pearl Harbor in the early 1930s was minuscule compared to the massive installation it would become just one decade later. Despite wide inner lochs—bays of water spreading out from the main channel—its entrance was historically shallow. Nineteenth-century visitors had anchored off Honolulu a few miles to the east instead. In 1887, Hawaii’s King Kalākaua granted the United States the exclusive right to establish a coaling and repair station in Pearl Harbor and improve the entrance as it saw fit. No facilities were built, but the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. When the American Navy built its first installations within months of annexation, they were at Honolulu, not Pearl Harbor, because of the difficult channel access. Finally, in 1908, Congress authorized dredging the channel entrance and constructing a dry dock, as well as adding accompanying shops and supply buildings. Naval Station Pearl Harbor was officially dedicated in August 1919. The Army and Navy jointly acquired Ford Island in the harbor’s center for shared airfield facilities that same year.9

Overshadowing these annual war games were the color-coded war plans against potential foes that had been developed and routinely revised since before World War I. These included Plan Black against Germany, Plan Green against Mexico, and Plan Red against Great Britain—however unlikely the latter. Plan Orange anticipated a war against Japan and decreed that in that event the US fleet would sail west to relieve the Philippines—judged a likely target—and engage the Japanese fleet en route in a pivotal battle, just as Admiral George Dewey had done in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

By 1937, with Japan gaining military strength and using it to invade China, American war planners devised a worst-case scenario in the event of an attack on the Philippines. It called for a withdrawal to a defensive Alaska–Oahu–Panama line in the eastern Pacific—a strategic triangle—and an economic boycott to constrain Japan while sufficient forces were mobilized. As war clouds again loomed in Europe, Plan Orange and other singular-foe plans evolved into “Rainbow” war plans that anticipated simultaneous operations against multiple foes. In effect, this meant a two-ocean war and operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

US Navy into which young men enlisted during the late 1930s and early 1940s was decidedly white. This had not always been the case. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, African Americans served in a largely integrated American Navy and made up about 25 percent of its enlisted strength. Some thirty thousand African Americans manned Union vessels during the Civil War, with little discrimination as to duties. After segregation was legalized in 1896, African American enlistments declined and black men were increasingly relegated to the galley or engine room. After World War I, African American enlisted personnel declined further as the Navy recruited Filipino stewards for mess duties. By June 1940, African Americans accounted for only 2.3 percent of the Navy’s 170,000 total manpower. The fleet had mostly converted from coal to oil, and the vast majority of African Americans performed mess duties. Black reenlistments in technical specialties were never barred, however, and a few African American gunner’s mates, torpedo men, and machinist mates continued to serve. Amendments to the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 guaranteed the right to enlist regardless of race or color, but in practice, “separate but equal” prejudices consigned most blacks to the Steward’s Branch. Its personnel held ratings up to chief petty officer, but members wore different uniforms and insignia, and even chief stewards never exercised command over rated grades outside the Steward’s Branch. The only measure of equality came when, just as with everyone else aboard ship, African American and Filipino stewards were assigned battle stations. Only then could they stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brothers in arms.13

During these years between the wars, the Arizona was “neither the best nor the worst among the fleet’s battleships.” According to historian Paul Stillwell, “She generally fit in around the middle in gunnery practice, overall battle efficiency, sports, and the rest of the contests” but earned an occasional E for excellence painted on her smokestack. Her mission was twofold: to be a force in readiness should hostilities break out against some color-coded opponent and to train men for what by the end of the 1930s had become the increasingly inevitable prospect of another war.14

Rather than return to home ports on the West Coast, American battleships and aircraft carriers, along with escorting cruisers, destroyers, and support ships, stayed in Hawaiian waters, mostly mooring within the confines of Pearl Harbor when not at sea. Former assistant secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, now president of the United States, ordered the move as a show of force to Japan, signaling that America would not condone its further aggression in the western Pacific. The results were not encouraging. Japan did not so much as pause in its drive into China. Almost everyone else, from the commander in chief of the US Fleet, Admiral James O. Richardson, down to the greenest seaman on the Arizona, thought the Hawaiian deployment was a bad idea.

Commander Fuqua’s Deck Department had one major task to complete, however, before it could relax. Having been at sea, Arizona needed to replenish its fuel tanks. In expectation of the upcoming voyage to Long Beach—some 2,500 miles—a full load of 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil was pumped aboard. Despite the trade winds blowing across Pearl Harbor that December morning, an oily smell lingered and lay heavy in the air. Elsewhere aboard the Arizona, storage tanks contained 180,000 gallons of aviation fuel for the three Vought Kingfisher scouting planes, and ammunition lockers brimmed with more than a million pounds of gunpowder. Crew members had long learned to take such explosive cargo as a matter of course, but each of the seven battleships moored along Battleship Row—and Pennsylvania momentarily on blocks in Dry Dock No. 1—carried the ingredients to readily become floating bombs.8

A generation or two earlier, watertenders had been called firemen or stokers and were responsible for firing and maintaining the coal furnaces that heated the water in the boilers to produce steam. Fuel oil now powered most surface ships, and watertenders saw to the oil-fed fires and boilers in the engine room. These engines produced steam for propulsion and generated electrical power for the ship’s lights and equipment.

There was a big difference between liberty and leave. “Liberty” was short-term, an authorized absence from duty for less than forty-eight hours. Generally, when ships were in port, no sailor could be deprived of liberty on shore for more than twelve days unless—in the words of the venerable Bluejackets’ Manual—“the exigencies of the service or the unhealthfulness of the port prevent.” Liberty could also be denied to those whose prior conduct on shore had proven “discreditable to the service.” “Leave” was the authorized absence from duty for more than forty-eight hours. At the discretion of their commanding officer, enlisted men whose services could be spared were granted up to thirty days leave in any one calendar year, exclusive of travel time. A month’s paid vacation per year was a major perk. Because leaves had to be distributed throughout the year to maintain the efficiency of the ship, it behooved one to make requests early.

Down under, it was already Sunday, December 7, and to the Australian government the possibility of keeping the lid on tensions seemed remote. A United Press story, datelined Melbourne, confirmed the southward movement of the Japanese navy and reported that the Australian cabinet had “met twice in Melbourne instead of at Canberra in order to maintain closest contact with the armed forces.” The cabinet had cancelled its normal weekend adjournment due to late information that seemed “to indicate an immediate break in Japanese-American relations.”10 Given

year-old man in a matter of hours.”13 Moored alongside the West Virginia inboard to Ford Island, the Tennessee had taken two bomb hits from the high-altitude bombers of the first wave. Far more seriously, the Tennessee had been inundated by a wall of blazing oil and debris blowing onto its stern from the burning Arizona. The heat was intense, and fires started on the stern and port quarter of the ship. There were no thoughts about abandoning ship, but with his crew engaged in major firefighting efforts, the Tennessee’s captain tried to move his ship forward to escape the inferno astern. He signaled for all engines ahead five knots, but the Tennessee didn’t budge. The battleship was wedged too tightly against the quays by the stricken West Virginia. Nonetheless, its engines were kept turning throughout the day and long into the night so that the propeller wash would keep the burning oil from the Arizona away from its stern as well as the West Virginia. As it was, one of the Tennessee’s motor launches caught fire from the burning oil and sank as it tried to rescue survivors.

THROUGHOUT 1941, THE officers and crew of the Arizona were caught up in an ever-escalating whirlwind. The air was filled with war tension that everyone from admirals to raw recruits could feel. Most traced the origins to the day Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, but Japan had been at war in the Pacific since its efforts to subjugate China in 1937. At the heart of the matter were natural resources. What Japan’s home islands lacked, Japan needed to find elsewhere. After France surrendered to Germany and Great Britain stood alone against the Axis threat, Japan took advantage of the collapse of French authority in Indochina to move south, seize more territory, and threaten the natural resources of the Netherlands East Indies.

By the spring of 1941, there was no longer any doubt that America was gearing up for war. In March, Roosevelt announced Lend-Lease aid to Great Britain, and in May, he declared a state of “unlimited national emergency.” Such support for Great Britain did nothing to ease American relations with Japan. In July, determined to stop further Japanese expansion beyond Indochina, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands acted in concert to shut off the flow of raw materials upon which the Japanese war machine relied. The three countries instituted an embargo against Japan of oil, steel, and other strategic imports. Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States, closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, and recalled Major General Douglas MacArthur to active duty to defend the Philippines. Far from slowing Japan’s war-making capabilities, these actions, particularly the oil embargo, served only to increase the urgency Japan felt to subjugate China and gobble up oil and rubber from the East Indies. By

Arizona arrived in Pearl Harbor from San Pedro on July 8, 1941. For the remainder of the summer, the ship spent two weeks at a time moored along Battleship Row adjacent to Ford Island, interspersed by a week of training exercises. These exercises included everything from range-finder calibration on the big fourteen-inch guns to antiaircraft practice. Sometimes Arizona operated independently, escorted by several destroyers, and at other times the battleship steamed in concert with Nevada and Oklahoma, the other ships of Battleship Division One.5

Throughout Saturday afternoon, launches from the Arizona and the six other battleships moored along Battleship Row ferried sailors to the fleet landing in the harbor’s Southeast Loch. Leaving one’s ship was a formal affair. Those answering liberty call lined up on the quarterdeck in two rows. The officer of the deck inspected those assembled to make certain that uniforms were clean and pressed and shoes polished. Receiving his liberty card, each man saluted the officer of the deck and asked for permission to leave the ship. As his salute was returned, the man’s name was checked off the liberty list. He then saluted the American flag above the quarterdeck and climbed down the gangway to the waiting launch.

While Japan’s brazenness and duplicity on the morning of December 7, 1941, would come as a shock to the American psyche, President Franklin Roosevelt had slowly but steadily been preparing the country for war from the start of his presidency. He began in 1933 by diverting dollars from a public works bill to build two aircraft carriers. A year later, Congress voted to increase naval strength to the limits of existing treaties. The 1938 Naval Expansion Act boosted tonnages further, and additional legislation in 1940—including one bill called the Two-Ocean Navy Act—authorized the construction of seven battleships, eighteen aircraft carriers, and an assortment of smaller ships.

Once Arizona got underway for Pearl Harbor, however, the bandsmen also got an indoctrination into what it meant to be a Navy band aboard a warship. Among a full complement of 1,512 men, the musicians were assigned duty stations in sick bay and trained to administer injections of morphine. They were also introduced to their battle stations. As a unit, they were to man the hoists that carried gunpowder charges from the ammunition hold up to the fourteen-inch guns in Turret No. 2.3

The supply ship Antares (AG-10) was inbound to Pearl Harbor, heading toward the submarine nets protecting the entrance channel. Between Antares and the barge it was towing, Captain Outerbridge made out the unmistakable silhouette of the conning tower and periscope of an unknown submarine. There was no doubt in his mind that this was an intruder intent on following Antares through the open submarine nets and into the harbor. Outerbridge called for speed and ordered a turn toward the target as the Ward surged to twenty knots. At 6:45 a.m. the destroyer fired two shots from its four-inch guns. The first passed directly over the submarine’s conning tower and missed. The second hit the submarine at the waterline between the conning tower and its hull. As the Ward’s action report later characterized it, “This was a square positive hit.” The target heeled over to starboard and appeared to slow and sink, drifting into a tightly spaced salvo of depth charges set for 100 feet that the Ward dropped as it crossed the submarine’s bow. Outerbridge couldn’t be certain, but a large oil slick on the surface after the depth charges exploded indicated that his quarry had likely sunk. He radioed a voice transmission saying the Ward had “dropped depth charges upon subs,” but two minutes later, fearing that the report might be taken merely as one more in a long line of sketchy contacts, Outerbridge made clear that this had been no illusion: “We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges on a submarine operating in defensive sea area,” he radioed. Seconds later, just to be certain his information had been received, Outerbridge queried, “Did you get that last message?” The answer was yes, and the report made its way up the chain of command, reaching Admiral Kimmel about forty minutes later. Like others who’d relayed the message, Kimmel was skeptical. “I was not at all certain that this was a real attack,” he later told investigators. It would take sixty years before a Japanese midget submarine was discovered in some twelve hundred feet of water with a hole in its conning tower—evidence that Outerbridge and the Ward had indeed inflicted the first casualties of the day.4

The least senior men in each division served as mess cooks and set up tables and benches for each meal. They retrieved food from the main galley in pots and on platters, and it was passed around family-style. The place settings were heavy white porcelain plates and mugs and stainless-steel utensils. The senior rated man at each table was responsible for the conduct of the men at his table. It was quite permissible to ask for seconds if there was food left—usually a rarity—but anyone who attempted to help himself before all had been initially served was apt to get more than his hand slapped. Afterward, the mess cooks hauled everything back to the galley for washing to make it ready for the next meal.

By the spring of 1941, there was no longer any doubt that America was gearing up for war. In March, Roosevelt announced Lend-Lease aid to Great Britain, and in May, he declared a state of “unlimited national emergency.” Such support for Great Britain did nothing to ease American relations with Japan. In July, determined to stop further Japanese expansion beyond Indochina, the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands acted in concert to shut off the flow of raw materials upon which the Japanese war machine relied. The three countries instituted an embargo against Japan of oil, steel, and other strategic imports. Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States, closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping, and recalled Major General Douglas MacArthur to active duty to defend the Philippines. Far from slowing Japan’s war-making capabilities, these actions, particularly the oil embargo, served only to increase the urgency Japan felt to subjugate China and gobble up oil and rubber from the East Indies. By September, after a German U-boat fired a torpedo at the American destroyer Greer (DD-145) while it was on convoy duty in the North Atlantic, Roosevelt authorized a shoot-on-sight policy against U-boats. A month later, the destroyer Reuben James (DD-245) spotted a periscope too late and caught a torpedo that blew off its bow. The ship sank in five minutes. Out of a complement of 143 officers and men, only 44 enlisted men survived.

Being above decks in the forward part of the ship when the forward magazines exploded was almost as automatic of a death sentence as being below decks in that area. Men were burned to an unrecognizable crisp, incinerated in an instant, or buried under tons of molten steel.

The second wave of Japanese attackers was less than an hour behind the first. This time, knowing the defenders would be on the alert, slow-flying, low-altitude torpedo planes were judged too vulnerable to antiaircraft fire and were not included in the attack. Only Val dive-bombers and high-altitude Kates delivered the punches, but they reversed the targets of their comrades an hour earlier. Instead of the battleships, the Kates dropped their bombs on planes and installations on Ford Island and at Hickam Field. Eighteen struck Ford Island, although the billowing smoke from the Arizona and other fires was so intense that it obscured much of the target. Twenty-seven bombers hit Hickam, while the remaining nine Kates pummeled Kaneohe Naval Air Station on the eastern shores of Oahu. The eighty Val dive-bombers largely sought targets of opportunity among the undamaged ships throughout the harbor. Judging that resistance from American fighters had been suppressed by the first strike, the thirty-six Zeroes accompanying the second wave broke into two groups and went after their own targets. Eighteen hit Kaneohe and Bellows Field, while the remaining Zeroes strafed service buildings and parked aircraft at Hickam Field. Even if few American planes were flying, a barrage of antiaircraft fire from ships in the harbor shot down six Zeroes and fourteen Vals in this second wave.

Then, Japanese pilots found the range, and five bombs struck the ship. Three hit forward of Turret No. 1 and left the bow a mangled mess. One of these ignited a gasoline storage tank and started a blaze that might have proven as catastrophic as that on the Arizona but for the fact that as part of a regular ammunition rotation, the Nevada’s crew had yet to reload twenty-eight hundred bags of powder into its main magazines. The other two bombs exploded at the base of the main mast and smokestack, damaging the director stations on the foremast. Rather than risk the ship sinking and blocking the entrance channel, the senior officer afloat ordered the Nevada to beach near floating Dry Dock No. 2, adjacent to Hospital Point.

As the Val dive-bombers sought other targets in addition to the Nevada, they found the battleship Pennsylvania as it sat in Dry Dock No. 1 along with two destroyers, Cassin and Downes. The lone occupant of Dry Dock No. 2 nearby was the destroyer Shaw. Several attacking planes dropped 550-pound bombs on the Shaw. Two penetrated the main deck near the five-inch guns forward of the bridge. A third went clean through the bridge superstructure and ruptured fuel tanks, setting the front half of the Shaw ablaze. This fire caused the forward magazines to detonate just as they had on the Arizona. A huge explosion, second only to that on the Arizona, sent a mass of flames and mangled metal into the air. A great deal of it landed on the decks of the nearby Nevada, making it twice in less than an hour that the battleship had come under such an assault. Meanwhile, the Shaw broke in two. Finding Hospital Point not so hospitable, a tug pushed the Nevada off the beach and across the channel to a new resting spot aground on Waipio Peninsula across from Ford Island. As Robert Meyer observed, the battleship “kept its deck above water but not by much.” Meanwhile, the Arizona and the rest of the battleships strewn along Battleship Row were not going anywhere.1

As its decks emptied of the pitifully small number of survivors, the Arizona was not the only ship being abandoned. The West Virginia had sustained multiple torpedo hits as well as bomb blasts. With its captain dead on the bridge, the executive officer, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, gave the order to abandon ship without being in direct communication with damage control parties working to counter-flood the vessel and keep it from rolling over. The confusion was soon sorted out and the order countermanded, but in the interim, men went over the side.

For the deck guns, gunner’s mates were responsible for the hydraulic and electrical systems necessary for tracking, aiming, loading, and firing the gun. At general quarters, a gunner’s mate might be inside the gun mounts or the turrets of the big fourteen-inch guns or below in the ammunition bays.

As the Arizona’s men gathered for breakfast and the enemy submarine report from the Ward made its way up the naval chain of command, the Army’s Opana Mobile Radar Station at Kahuku Point on the northern tip of Oahu shut down for the day. Privates Joseph Lockard and George Elliott had been on duty since 4:00 a.m., and their three-hour shift training on a relatively new warning system was over. Lockard had been instructing Elliott in reading the radarscope, but just as he reached to turn it off, a large image began to march across his screen from the north. Lockard’s first thought was that something had gone haywire with his set, but when everything checked out, he and Elliott called in a report of what appeared to be more than fifty planes approaching Oahu about 130 miles out. The Information Center at Fort Shafter, to which they reported, was charged with directing pursuit aircraft to intercept any incoming threat, but it was also shutting down for the day. The senior officer remaining at the Information Center was First Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, the executive officer of the 78th Pursuit Squadron, who was serving only his second day of duty at the center. Tyler would always be adamant that it never crossed his mind that these incoming planes could possibly be enemy aircraft, particularly as a far more likely explanation presented itself. Two squadrons of B-17 bombers, totaling twelve aircraft, were nearing Hickam Field from the northeast that morning after an overnight flight from California. After refueling, they were supposed to continue on to the Philippines to augment General MacArthur’s air force. Tyler was convinced that the Opana station had detected this flight of bombers and told Lockard and Elliott, “Well, don’t worry about it.”14

Lockard and Elliott were, of course, looking at far more than fifty planes. In fact, the first wave of Japanese attackers approaching northern Oahu numbered 183 aircraft: 43 Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” fighters; 51 Aichi D3A “Val” dive-bombers; 49 Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” bombers deployed with bombs for a high altitude attack; and 40 “Kate” bombers armed with torpedoes. Even as Lockard and Elliott watched this mass come closer, 170 more planes, part of a second attack wave, rose from their carrier decks and streaked south.15

As Fuqua and his breakfast companions sipped second cups of coffee, the first wave of Japanese planes crossed the northernmost point of Oahu and flew almost directly over the startled faces of Privates Lockard and Elliott at Kahuku Point. The Zero fighters surged ahead to suppress any resistance from Army Air Forces fighters from Wheeler, Kaneohe, and Hickam airfields. Val dive-bombers climbed to twelve thousand feet and cut directly across the island to approach Pearl Harbor from the northeast. Kates carrying torpedoes dropped to near sea level and split into two groups to come at the harbor from opposite directions. The Kates assigned to high-altitude bombing made a lazy circle over the western point of the island and then turned northeast,

The whole point of armor-piercing shells employed as bombs was that when dropped from an altitude that generated enough accelerating speed, the hardened casings penetrated armor and the impact triggered delayed fuses of several tenths of a second that then detonated the explosive component for maximum damage. When dropped from ten thousand feet from the Kates, these projectiles were capable of penetrating at least five inches of deck armor.

Bosun Calhoun then launched into an account of the attack the day before and reviewed the damage suffered by the sunken battleships. He said the USS Nevada was berthed astern of the Arizona when she was struck by a torpedo in her bow. She managed to get under way with her guns blazing, the only battleship able to do so. As she rounded the southern tip of Ford Island, she was smashed with an avalanche of bombs, which started intense fires. When the thick, pungent smoke from the fires poured into the machinery spaces, the black gang, or engineers, headed for topside and fresh air. This forced abandonment left the pumping machinery inoperative. The forward ammunition magazines were purposely flooded to prevent explosions from the fires, but the after magazines were also flooded by mistake, which caused the ship to sink lower and lower in the water. In addition, ballast tanks were flooded on the starboard side to correct a port list. As more water entered the ship, many fittings that passed through watertight bulkheads began to leak, flooding all machinery spaces and causing loss of all electrical and mechanical power. Nevada was sinking in the ship channel.

Meanwhile, Honolulu, too, had been under attack—or so it seemed. Japanese aircraft had not dropped bombs on the city, but American antiaircraft shells, most improperly fused for detonation at altitude, had fallen on it. This unintended bombardment caused about forty explosions and added sixty-eight civilian deaths to the rising toll in the harbor. By about 10:30 a.m. Pearl Harbor time, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin rushed out the first of three extras that day, and Japan, with most of its attacking planes safely back on its carriers, had formally declared war on the United States and Great Britain.

In the harbor beyond Kimmel’s window, a flotilla of motor launches and small boats spread out across the water like frenzied water spiders. They carried the wounded first to the hospital ship Solace and then, after its hastily enlarged trauma space overflowed, to the main medical facilities on Hospital Point and a triage area set up on 1010 Dock adjacent to the Argonne. Some of the wounded were carried aboard the Argonne, where the warrant officers’ mess was converted into an emergency operating room. By midmorning, personnel from the Argonne and other ships had also set up a field hospital at the nearby Officers’ Club. On Hospital Point, Naval Hospital Pearl Harbor was a state-of-the-art facility with about 250 beds, but the carnage quickly taxed it well beyond anything its staff had ever imagined. The first casualties arrived even as the second wave of attackers still pounded the harbor. As more poured in, ambulatory patients on the wards with far less critical conditions were discharged or evacuated to vacant outbuildings and hastily erected tents behind the hospital. Within three hours, the hospital received 546 casualties and 313 dead.

During the chaos of the morning attacks, planes inbound from Enterprise, as well as a squadron of B-17 bombers coming from the mainland, had come under assault—from the attacking Japanese as well as the defenders. That was somewhat coincidental and to some extent unavoidable. Enterprise lost six planes in the melee. Halsey had been right to be worried. They were indeed shooting at his boys. By evening, however, defenders should have been alert to distinguish between friend and foe. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, incoming friendlies,” the control tower on Ford Island advised all ships and shore installations as this second group of aircraft from the Enterprise, the six Wildcats, entered the pattern with landing lights ablaze. But over the dry docks, nervous gunners on the Pennsylvania opened fire. That was all it took. The entire harbor erupted in gunfire. Four of the six Wildcats were shot down and three American pilots killed.

The absence of battleships in the task force that steamed with Enterprise toward Wake had little to do with the growing importance of the aircraft carrier as a strategic weapon. There were many officers in the Navy—“black shoes,” as opposed to those upstart aviators who wore brown shoes—who clung stubbornly to the doctrine of battleship might. But hurling fourteen-inch shells a dozen miles at one’s opponent was about to change. For Arizona or other battleships that might have accompanied Enterprise, it was a simple matter of math. The top speed of the Arizona and the standard classes of battleships built before the Washington Treaty was 21 knots (24 mph). Enterprise, the slowest of the three carriers then in the Pacific, could move along at 32 knots (37 mph). When it came to covering distances and getting the job done, Enterprise and its consorts were high-speed delivery machines. The plodding battleships simply could not keep up. Had they been along, the trip to Wake would have taken 50 percent longer, exposing the force to enemy submarines that much longer.

The legal status of brothers serving together aboard one ship during wartime is particularly perplexing. After the catastrophic losses on the Arizona and the Juneau, as well as the near misses of the six Patten brothers on the Nevada and their later service on the Lexington at Coral Sea, the Navy modified its long-standing policy of encouraging or at least acquiescing to brothers serving together, but it never absolutely prohibited the practice.

When Arizona emerged from dry dock with new steel plates welded into place on the portside blister to close the gash from the collision, there was a far more noticeable and ominous change in the ship’s appearance. The Navy’s peacetime color scheme of light gray had given way to a dark bluish-gray applied to the hull and superstructure up to the level of the bridge. Only the foretop and maintop enclosures on the two tripod masts and the tops of the masts themselves were still light gray. This was a form of wartime camouflage that supposedly made the ship less likely to stand out against the horizon.

Whatever anxiety crew members on the Arizona and throughout the Pacific Fleet felt about the future would have been heightened had they known that on this same Thanksgiving day, the War and Navy departments in Washington issued what came to be called their “war warning” to all commands: “negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.” At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, met with Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., the commander of his carrier forces, and Army Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, commander of land forces in Hawaii. Kimmel and Halsey had already organized task forces of cruisers and destroyers around the three aircraft carriers then operating in the Pacific: Lexington (CV-2), Saratoga (CV-3), and Enterprise (CV-6). To guard against a concerted attack or sabotage, they adopted a general protocol that only one carrier task force would be in Pearl Harbor at any one time. At the moment, this meant alternating between Lexington and Enterprise because Saratoga had yet to return to Hawaiian waters after a lengthy overhaul at Bremerton. A similar alternating routine was supposed to be in place among the three battleship divisions. Of the nine battleships in those three-ship divisions, Colorado was currently in Bremerton undergoing its own overhaul. With the war warning in hand, Admiral Kimmel and General Short concerned themselves primarily with the outer boundaries of their commands and not with Hawaii itself. The chief topic they discussed with Halsey was the delivery of aircraft to reinforce garrisons on Wake and Midway islands. Short wanted to deploy Army squadrons of new P-40s, but Halsey quoted an arcane regulation that Army pilots were required to stay within fifteen miles of land and asked what good they would be in protecting an island.

Total casualties, including civilians, from the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, were 2,403 killed and 1,178 wounded. Of the number of dead, almost one half—1,177 men—were on the Arizona, out of the complement of 1,514 assigned to the ship. The sinking of the Arizona remains the worst single military ship disaster in American history.

In the summer of 1942—after the Arizona losses, but before the Sullivans went down on the Juneau—the Bureau of Naval Personnel issued an informational bulletin forbidding commanding officers from forwarding requests from brothers to serve in the same ship or station. “The Bureau considers that it is to the individual family interest that brothers not be put on the same ship in war time,” the instructions read, “as the loss of such a ship may result in the loss of two or more members of the family, which might be avoided if brothers are separated.

While all Pearl Harbor survivors may have their ashes scattered over the harbor, only Arizona survivors may be interred on the ship. Urns are placed underwater in the well of the barbette for Turret No. 4.

Today, along what was once Battleship Row, white mooring quays still dot the waters off the eastern side of Ford Island. Near where the West Virginia and Tennessee lay on the morning of December 7, 1941, the battleship Missouri, some 250 feet longer than its older sisters, stands guard. Its bow points not toward the sea but to the gleaming white structure rising above the remains of the Arizona. Dedicated in 1962, the USS Arizona Memorial spans the sunken ship amidships like a covered bridge. The lone flagpole is attached to the superstructure of the Arizona.

Getting underway again, Arizona cleared the Pearl Harbor entrance and steamed off for night battle practice. On the evening of October 22, Arizona, as part of Battleship Division One along with Nevada and Oklahoma, was still at sea conducting maneuvers. As darkness fell, Admiral Kidd, as COMBATDIV One on Arizona leading the way, ordered the three ships out of column and into a line abreast. As the lead ship, Arizona occasionally flashed a searchlight off low-hanging clouds as a reference point. Nonetheless, the distance between Arizona and Oklahoma to port decreased until it became uncomfortably close. Aboard Arizona, Captain Van Valkenburgh ordered hard right rudder and signaled for flank speed. On Oklahoma, its captain ordered full astern as his ship was constrained from turning left by the proximity of the Nevada on his port beam. Both ships sounded collision sirens, but it was too late. Oklahoma, having a reinforced bow meant for ramming, struck the Arizona, a glancing blow on the port quarter. The portside torpedo blister meant to absorb torpedo attacks took the brunt of the blow. It resulted in a V-shaped gash in the blister four feet wide and twelve feet high. The structural integrity of the Arizona’s hull was not compromised, but this damage necessitated the ship’s return to Pearl Harbor for a week in dry dock. The Oklahoma got off easy with only the jack staff on its bow bent out of shape from the force of the impact.10

Of the 337 Arizona crew members who survived the attack, about two thirds were not aboard the Arizona that morning. They were ashore on liberty, staying in the Bachelor Officer Quarters on Ford Island, or temporarily assigned to other stations. Of the dead, more than nine hundred officers, sailors, and Marines—from Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd to just-reported-aboard Private Leo Amundson—remain entombed in the sunken hull of the Arizona.

After the five Sullivan brothers were lost in November 1942, a long-standing misconception developed among the general public that the Navy absolutely forbid brothers from serving together and went to lengths to reassign them to other ships. This was never the case. Rather, a Bureau of Naval Personnel circular two full years after the Sullivan tragedy addressed the “Return to the United States of Sons of War-Depleted Families,” essentially a sole survivor policy. This recognized “the sacrifice and contribution made by a family which has lost two or more sons who were members of the armed forces and has only one surviving, and he is serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard.” In that case, consideration would be given “to his return to, or retention in, the continental limits of the United States, except when he is engaged in nonhazardous duties overseas.” None of this was automatic, however, and applications for such return or retention to duty within the United States had to be filed by the sailor himself or his immediate family. Out of a sense of service, many men never took advantage of these provisions in the final year of the war.

Two miles above Oahu, Lieutenant Shojiro Kondo, the Nakajima bombardier for lead pilot Tadashi Kusumi, found a target and commenced release of his payload. It contained 132 solid pounds of toxic, pale yellow cast crystals that formed the explosive, TriNitroAnisole. Starting its descent, the warhead picked up speed and moved with purpose—averaging over 377 feet per second. Its kinetic energy increased, as it sought the target. Within 26 seconds, it would be found.

The bomb’s load of packed TriNitroAnisole—a “moderate” explosive in and of itself, was equivalent to around 107 sticks of dynamite. But when combined with 1.3 million pounds of explosive black powder, and over a million gallons of Bunker-C diesel fuel and aviation gasoline, the explosive power was equal to more than 525 tons of TNT. At

As though ignition had been triggered on an enormous rocket, Arizona’s skin blew open and vented a propulsive force, so enormous, that it raised its thirty-seven ton hull over thirty feet above waterline.

The concussion from the main explosion, was intense—a force so large that, without discrimination, it blew officers and sailors off the decks of Arizona, Vestal, Nevada, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Arizona slammed down hard. Combined with the explosive force, it cut through the harbor’s water supply line that fed Ford Island, and created a ten-foot tidal wave that plowed into its banks.

Venting toward port, then starboard, the violent concussion blew many of Arizona's and Vestal’s crews off its decks and into the water. Fires that had burned on Vestal were blown out by the blast’s force.

Body parts and chunks of steel landed on Ford Island. And anyone caught forward or amidships were either incinerated or sent into the burning, oil-covered water.

The expanding wave of intense heat caused his exterior optical glass to explode, as the blast created its own hurricane force winds that propelled the monstrous fireball outward and skyward.

The captain’s and admiral’s bridge—and those inside, were incinerated as the explosive fire enveloped the starboard director, shot over the sky control platform, wrapped itself around the port-side director, and then climbed the main mast and beyond, as it chased the acrid, black, mushroom cloud—and created the perfect fire storm.

The powerful blast first entered the director through the starboard hatchway, where Dvorak sat—in a direct line with the incoming fireball—hands tight on his steering wheel’s brodie knobs. The concussion and fireball hit him first—full force—while it raced starboard to port. As if a rag doll, Dvorak was at once lifted from his position, and slammed back, hard, against his fixed metal seat. The force then caught Stratton in the face and chest; grabbed and slammed him against the bulkhead and, according to Stratton, “…rattled me around like a piñata.” “I thought I was going blind, from the fire”, Stratton would tell Lauren, years later. On the platform, Zeke had already decided to head back inside. He managed to grab hold of the hatchway handles just as the blast raced through and circumnavigated the director. The force of the concussion hit him in the back, and face-on. As if a spirit’s presence had seized his body, it grabbed at Zimmerman’s torso and bent him forward, then backwards. The impact ripped his grip from the door handles, sucked him into the flames, and dispatched him, hard, against the platform’s railing. Inside, Hollowell was propelled backwards, across the steel cube. His head slammed against the range finder with a forceful blow, and his body was dumped next to Lott—who had pulled Lauren’s blanket tighter across his own head. The hellish fireball had sucked oxygen from the cube, shot across the steel shell, and merged with a second blast of flames through the port and rear hatchways. As if in a boxing match—in a futile attempt to protect his face from being hit by the fire and heat—Lauren held tight to the range finder. Instinct caused him to raise his right arm around the viewport, for protection.

There were now three options open to the navy. The first was to sever the forward section of the ship using dynamite. This would take months to accomplish, but would allow the after section of the ship to be floated and probably salvaged. The second was to flatten the ship with dynamite and drive her deeper into the mud. This would clear the quay, allowing other ships to use it. This second option was never seriously considered because the graves of the crew would be desecrated. The third option was chosen. The plan was to cut off the superstructure above water and construct a memorial in tribute to those who lost their lives on 7 December. When the decision was finalized, diving work was suspended on the Arizona. The two barges were moved, and we soon began work on the USS California.

There’s just one thing that upset me… even today. When civilians learn my Navy rank was ‘Fire Control,’ they immediately think of me as a fireman, who’d put out fires on the ship.” “Always have to explain the Navy term, Fire Control, means I was on a crew, as highly trained as a fireman… but with a different set of skills. In Fire Control, we helped manage the armament of the ship, by determining firing solutions to be used against the enemy.

At this time, in nineteen thirty-nine, radar aboard Arizona had not yet been introduced, nor had the ship been retrofitted to include two bridge wings that would support twin anti-aircraft directors, above the admiralty bridge. Bruner would eventually be assigned to one of them, to assist in optically measuring target range, bearing and elevation, with his fellow crew mates, for transmission of coordinates down

Any Navy man—enlisted or officer—sent to a Captain’s Mast, often held on the ship’s forecastle “…was in deep trouble.” Not as hard on a sailor as court-martial, but it could be serious enough to get up to 30 days in the galley, confinement to quarters, loss of pay, extra duties, reduction of grade/rank, or other punishments handed out by the CO or XO.

Ironically,” he said, “it all proves the ol’ saying, ‘life’s a circle.’ ‘Cause one of my other assigned jobs in the early days, was to help clean the number four gun turret. And wouldn’t ‘ya know… that’s exactly where I’ll be interred someday, back on my ship with my buddies after I pass from this life to the next.

The first place we’d hit was Arizona crew’s favorite watering hole—Smith’s Union Bar, 19 Hotel Street—right in the middle of all the action downtown.

All the good bars were located on Hotel Street, with Canal Street, which intersected Hotel, housing most of the cathouses. Some of the more popular bars gave you tickets with two drink maximums—not minimums— to keep the lines moving.

Navy cathouses were easy to spot. They had the longest lines to get in. Even more so during Friday or Saturday afternoons and evenings—at the height of liberty. Often, their lines stretched down an entire block.

A “working girls’ hotel,” which is what some called them, was usually on a second floor, with a “big bouncer” always stationed at the bottom step where the line began. “A good romp in the hay would generally set a sailor back between two and three dollars. Believe me… there was an endless line to make payments.” Each house had an alarm system to call Shore Patrol if trouble occurred. And every room had an emergency button to ring a bell if a girl needed help.

Every cathouse downtown was a clean establishment, checked by Navy doctors once every two weeks. The girls were all attractive. Mostly from the States. That made visiting a cathouse a little more like being home, despite being in the middle of the Pacific.” For added security, every cathouse had a bouncer. Usually Hawaiian. Always size Triple-X. Their main job, beside the one implied by their title, was to sit or stand by the door and let sailors and Marines in as others left.

With influence and pressure from the Navy, the cathouses—with relatively pleasant surroundings—were hospitable places to visit. Each was usually run by an attractive Madam or Manager, “…many of whom I used to stop by and have coffee with,” said Lauren. “Most of my shore patrol calls involved putting down an argument between a girl and her customer. Or I’d be called in to break up a fight between two sailors who happened to fall in love with the same girl.

Clusters of destroyers were tied up together at the far end of the East Loch beyond Ford Island, but it was the moorings along the island’s eastern side that commanded the most attention. These were home to the backbone of the Pacific battleship fleet. Numbered F-1, or Fox-1, to F-8 from southwest to northeast, the moorings, or quays, spread out almost three quarters of a mile. With good reason, everyone called it Battleship Row. By the evening of December 5, Battleship Row was home to the following ships: A small seaplane tender, the Avocet (AVP-4), tied up at F-1 for the weekend. F-2, which normally berthed an aircraft carrier was empty, Lexington and Enterprise both being at sea. Northeastward, California, the flagship of the Battle Force, moored at F-3. The oiler Neosho (AO-23), which was unloading a cargo of aviation gas and scheduled to depart for the states Sunday morning, occupied F-4. Then, things got a bit crowded. At F-5 and F-6, moored side by side in pairs, with fenders between them, sat Maryland on the inboard (Ford Island side) with Oklahoma outboard, and Tennessee inboard with West Virginia outboard. Astern of Tennessee lay the Arizona at F-7. All of these battleships were moored with their bows pointed down the channel to facilitate a rapid departure to sea.