John B. DeFields US Navy USS Shaw |
I enlisted in the Navy on January 10, 1940, in Detroit, Michigan, and for the next six years the USS Shaw was my Home. The Shaw was commissioned in 1936 at the Philadelphia Navy yard and decommissioned in October, 1945, at Brooklyn, New York. At the time of her decommissioning, I was the most senior member of the crew in regards to time on board. The Shaw was 341 ft. in length with a 35 ft. beam and the heaviest plating on the ship was 1/2" thick. She was 1,500 ton destroyer (a Mahan class) and known in the Navy lingo as a "tin can". Our armament, at the time of Pearl Harbor, consisted of two 50 cal. Machine guns, five 5"/38 cal. Dual purpose anti-aircraft guns and twelve torpedoes, also depth charges for anti-submarine warfare. As the war progressed, we received some 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns. These made us much more effective for operations against enemy aircraft. Prior to the war, we carried a crew of about 110 (this was raised to over 200 after the war started). During the war, the Shaw earned eleven battle stars and was engaged in most of the major actions around the South Pacific Islands such as Guadalcanal, New Britain, New Guineas, Saipan, Guam, the Philippines and many more. We also visited such places as Samoa, Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia as well as many lesser islands. We were attacked by some of the first Kamikazes of the war, in the Philippines, and had the distinction of being engaged in the last "surface battle" of WWII, as the Saw and the Charles Ausburne sank the Japanese destroyer Hanoki off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines in January of 1945. At the end of the war, the Shaw's casualty list stood at 29 killed and 57 wounded. At the time of Pearl Harbor, I was 19 years of age and a yeoman 3rd class. As a yeoman, my duties were office work, typing, shorthand, and acting as a court reporter when court martials were held. About two months prior to the war, all ships were steaming at night in a "darkened ship condition. In other words no lights showing at all, not even smoking on the main decks, and, or course, ships at this period of time did not have radar. On the night of November 27, 1941, we were on anti-submarine patrol off the entrance to Pearl Harbor (with orders to sink any submarine that we might contact) when the Sabine, an oil tanker, which was empty at the time, loomed out of the pitch black night and collided with us. She put a large gash in our starboard bow below the waterline and had we not been as close to the Harbor channel entrance as we were, I am sure the Shaw would have sunk. We were able to back into the Harbor and they immediately put us into a floating dry-dock where we were on the morning of December 7, 1941. The night before the Pearl Harbor attack, I had had shore patrol duty and consequently was allowed to sleep in later than usual on Sunday morning. I had just finished breakfast and was standing on the quarter-deck eating a doughnut when I noticed planes diving on Ford Island Naval Air Station. (The Japs hit our airbases first to destroy as many planes as possible before attacking the ships). This was not usual because they were always holding war games of some kind. But when I saw explosions after the planes had pulled out of their dives, my first thought was that some rookie had just ruined his Naval career by accidentally using live bombs. About this time, one of the planes pulled out of it's dive right over our ship and I saw those big "red meat balls" on the winds but still could not comprehend what was going on. About this time, our radio shack received the now famous message, "AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR THIS IS NO DRILL" and the General Quarters Alarm was sounded for battle stations. My battle station was on the bridge as the Captain's talker. In other words, I followed the Captain around the bridge, like a shadow, with a pair of head phones and my orders that he had for the other departments of the ship were relayed to those stations by me. (Prior to the war, most of the married officers had their families in Hawaii and so on weekends usually only the duty officers were on board. The crew was split into three watches so that 1/3 of them were usually on weekend pass). When I reached the bridge, I found that the Captain was not on board, so I had nothing to do. I also discovered that some of the officers that usually were on the bridge during General Quarters were not on board. So myself and the other crew that were on the bridge really had nothing to do so we merely watched as the battleships were being torpedoed. We had been on the bridge for probably 15 minutes when a Jap plane decided to make a strafing run on our ship and as his bullets shattered the windows in the bridge and splattered on the back of the pilot house we decided that that was not the best place to be and went down to the main deck. Upon reaching the main deck, there were a number of crewmen, like myself, with nothing to do. Due to the fact that the ship was in dry-dock, none of the engineers were needed at their battle stations nor were the five inch gun crews. We could not fire the five inch guns because the recoil might have tipped the ship over in the dry-dock. Our only armament that we could use were the 30 and 50 cal. Machine guns, which were used with success. Our ship carried a few rifles, so we were ordered to line up to receive a belt of ammunition and a rifle, with which we were supposed to shoot at the planes. I received an ammunition belt, which I put around my waist, but the rifles supply ran out before I received one, so the Officer of the Deck ordered the people that did not receive rifles to go to their abandon ship stations. My abandon ship station was in the ship's office, my job was to get the personnel records off the ship in case of sinking. I was in the ship's office only a short time when three radiomen from the radio shack, next to the office, came by the office door and asked me to come out into the passageway door to watch all the action that was going on. Before I could reply, we were struck by three 200 lb. Bombs, which passed completely through the ship before detonating almost directly below the office where we were standing. Everything in the office, including a very heavy safe, was blown into the overhead and the whole area burst into flames immediately. Two of the three fellows that had just spoken to me were never found and the third had several hundred pieces of shrapnel in him. He was in the hospital for over two years and then given a medical discharge. I (thank the Lord) took only one piece of shrapnel in the lower abdomen. The guys in the radio shack and myself left the area immediately with the wounded man and headed for the main deck to cross the gangplank onto the dry-dock, but upon reaching the gangplank found that there was so much flames on that side of the ship the gangplank could not be used. Everyone then went to the stern of the ship and made their way down some scaffolding into the bottom of the dry-dock, then up a ladder to the top of the dry-dock where we could jump into the water and swim ashore (about 150 yards). Just before jumping, I remembered that I still had the belt of ammunition around my waist and reached down to remove it so that it would not weight me down in the water. When I do so, I felt that I was all wet in front and looked down to see why. The front of my T-shirt was completely soaked with blood. I finally got enough courage to lift the T-shirt to see the cause and saw that I had a hole in my abdomen about 1 1/2" in length. Then I didn't want to jump into the water because I had visions of filling up with that dirty water. As I was debating with myself over this situation the Chief Pharmacists Mate came along and asked me why I was not jumping and I told him. His reply was "hell, you can't stay here, those magazines are going to blow any minute", and with that he gave me a push and I dropped the 25 feet into the water. There were probably 40 to 50 of us swimming to the beach when two Jap planes came down and strafed us (fortunately no casualties). As soon as I hit the beach, I headed for the Naval Hospital, which was about two or three blocks from where I crawled up on the beach. On my way across the hospital grounds I passed a Jap plane that had crashed and was burning on the front lawn. Upon reaching the hospital, the scene inside was complete bedlam. They had every kind of a wound and burn case that you could possibly imagine. A Pharmacists mate threw a handful of sulpha powder into my wound, and put a bandage on it and put me into a bed. There I stayed until about nine o'clock that night when they took me to surgery. During this time the Shaw's magazines blew up (severing the ship in two) and the resulting concussion blew a big share of the windows out of the hospital. Outside the operating room that they took me to and down the corridor, were probably 20 gurneys with a patient on each awaiting their turn for surgery. As they wheeled me into the operating room the doctor merely backed away from the operating table so they could remove the guy ahead of me and put me on. The doctor changed neither gown nor gloves and was covered with blood from head to foot. They gave me a spinal block and went to work to remove the piece of shrapnel that was in my abdomen. After surgery, they took me to a bed on the second floor for recovery. While laying there waiting for the feeling to come back into my legs, I heard planes, and of course, thought the Japs were returning. The hospital was blacked out as was the entire Navy yard. All of a sudden, every gun in the Pearl Harbor area started firing tracers and there I lay not being able to move a muscle from the waist down. As it turned out, the planes were some of our own coming in from one of our own carriers and unfortunately some of them were shot down by our won guns before they were identified. I spent about three weeks in the hospital, during which time it was decided to repair the Shaw, although she was very severely damaged, rather than to scrap her. I returned to the ship and on the Shaw took part in the rest of WWII. I was discharged on November 20, 1945, as a Chief Yeoman. The Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor with six carriers and 353 planes. We were able to knock down 29 of them. The Shaw's losses at Pearl Harbor were 25 Killed and 16 wounded. The total casualties at Pearl Harbor were 3,581 with 2,403 of that number being killed in action. The Japs made one big mistake, however, as they did only minor damage to our navy yard repair facilities and none at all to the tank farm where the fleet oil was stored. Had they hit either or both of these, the war would have been lengthened considerably. I was awarded the Purple Heart, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with eleven stars, American Theatre Medal with one star, American Defense Service Medal, Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one star and the Good Conduct Medal. |
Rate / Rank CY Service Branch USN Service Dates 1/1940 - 11/1945 Born 12/28/1921 COLOMA, MI Duty Stations USS SHAW (DD-373) - ENTIRE SIX YEARS Awards PURPLE HEART (PEARL HARBOR ATTACK) ASIATIC-PACIFIC CAMPAIGN MEDAL W/11 STARS AMERICAN THEATRE MEDAL W/1 STAR AMERICAN DEFENSE SERVICE MEDAL PHILIPPINE LIBERATION RIBBON W/1 STAR; GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL |
Information provided by John B. DeFields. |
