Jack Hammett US Navy US Naval Hospital |
For my 17 year old wife and me, it began like this......... Sunday morning December 7, 1941 was different. I was in bed with MaryJo after a night out at Kapiolani Park listening to dance band music. There had been a light rain and the morning was bright and balmy. A lot of explosions like big guns going off jarred us out of deep sleep. We assumed it was the Army conducting their usual maneuvers. We did startle full awake however, when a loud knock sounded on our door. I jumped out of bed and opened the door a crack to see my Chinese landlord standing there and asking for our rent money. The landlord quietly took the money and then in a normal voice said, "the Japs are attacking Pearl Harbor".......................................... This could have been compared to a statement that "by the way, it rained last night". The landlord then left leaving me standing there in my underwear trying to compute. A quick look outside the door that served the common entrance for all the rooms convinced me that "sure as hell" something was going on in Pearl Harbor, just 12 miles down the hill. Remember, there were not any visual obstructions then to keep from seeing all the way from our house to Pearl Harbor. A tremendous explosion occurred just then sending fire and smoke hundreds of feet into the air somewhere in the Naval Shipyard. It was later concluded that it was either the Arizona explosion or the Cassin and the Downs (destroyers in drydock) going up. All this took place in about the same time as it takes to read this. I immediately yelled for MaryJo to get my uniform and turn on the radio. "Frenchy", a submarine sailor and occupant of the room directly across from ours, stuck his head out and asked, "what the hell is happening"? I replied, "the Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor". While MaryJo was getting my uniform, I looked southward to sea and saw two naval destroyers running "with a bone in their teeth" back and forth about one or two miles off shore. At the same time I saw plumes of water going up adjacent to them which I interpreted as the "near misses" of dropping bombs. Both Frenchy and MaryJo joined me on the little porch outside the "lobby" and observed two or three planes wheeling in large circles above our house and Diamond Head. They had the well known "Red Meatball" painted on their wings. In the meantime, the radio was blaring out, "this is Not a Drill, this is Not a Drill, Pearl Harbor is being bombed by Japanese aircraft. All military personnel are ordered to return to their commands immediately". This kept being repeated over and over. Now, Frenchy and I, all charged up with excitement and in uniform (White uniform, hat and neckerchiefs) kissed our respective wives and started to run. Where? We didn't know. We just ran down the street until a pickup truck came by driven by a Japanese man. We immediately commandeered his truck and told him to drive us to the Army-Navy YMCA. That was in downtown Honolulu. About 6 miles from our Kaimuki residence. It was also the gathering spot for taxi cabs going to Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field bases. The charge was usually 25 cents per person and the cabs carried six. On arrival at that spot, all hell was breaking loose, cab drivers were standing by their cabs holding open the doors and yelling "get aboard" for Pearl. No charge. Instead of six persons, they loaded eight. Away they went at top speed, careening through the narrow streets of old downtown Honolulu. On entering the Yard, Frenchy went one way to the Submarine Base and I went the other to the Naval Hospital. Our duty stations lay about a mile apart. During this time the second wave of Japanese bombers and torpedo planes were still in the air. Strafing was going on, but I was not hurt. Scared, but not hit. I immediately commandeered another vehicle driven by a civilian Navy Yard worker and ordered to be taken to the Naval Hospital. This took less than three minutes. You should picture the scene. Standing to the left of the road was a two story building which was the nurses old quarters. New quarters had been built closer to the harbor. Next to the nurses quarters on the left was a one story building that was the hospital Laboratory. It had a basement that was used as the morgue and autopsy facility. A short street bore left between the Laboratory and the Main Building (three stories) housing the main hospital facilities. Remember, these were all old style tropical buildings with screened lanais (porches) running around them. Following down the road to the left led to the Hospital Corpsmen's' quarters, laundry, ambulance garage and Chief Petty Officer's housing. Between the housing facilities and the Laboratory were the tennis courts. Anyway, a little fat man was directing traffic and deploying arriving personnel. He wore a little alarm clock around his neck tied on with one inch gauze roller bandage. Why was that important? Damned if I knew, but it stuck in my mind. The first words out of the little guy's mouth were, "Hammett, you go into the Nurses quarters and start giving first aid!" There was no question, but to get cracking. On arrival inside the quarters on the lanai were bodies laying all around. A lot of groaning, crying, and screaming was going on all the time. Summoning up my courage, expertise and certainly attempting to "look good" to my fellow buddies, I singled out one of the men lying there. I bent down, picked up his wrist and said, "how're you doing Mate?" There being no answer, I felt dumfounded until another senior Pharmacist Mate said, "he's dead, dammit! Make out a Form N". Now a Form "N" was the pink death certificate that was made out on all deceased naval personnel. It was required to be made out in 12 copies, fingerprinted with right index finger on each copy and distributed to many different offices. It also assumed that the one making it out had access to certain information. Such as, name, rank, serial number, religion, next of kin, etc, etc. Needless to say my composure to act in an intelligent and organized manner went all to hell. As a matter of fact, this body didn't have a dog tag or anything. He'd been badly burned and was one helluva mess just to finger print. So, the hell with it! On to the next casualty. Well, bodies kept being brought in. Some dead, some dying, some barely hanging on. First aid was just that. Check breathing, stop hemorrhage, treat shock, immobilize fractures, triage for further care. We worked around the clock four hours first aid, four hours identification of dead. The living casualties were easy. Either you thought they had a chance, or you didn't. If you thought someone could make it, you moved them immediately to surgery. If you didn't, you moved them to the lanai and made them as comfortable as possible while they died. There was no shortage of morphine tartrate syrettes nor were there any restrictions on how many to use. I didn't remember eating at all that day. I did remember about four o'clock in the evening I took a break and walked down to the harbor. About two hundred yards. There lying directly across from Hospital Point lay the U.S.S. Nevada with her stern in the sugar can fields across the other side of the entrance channel. She'd been run aground while sinking rather than sink in the middle of the entrance channel. To the right on Ford Island lay battleship row with the burning and blown to hell remnants of the Pacific Battle Fleet. The U.S.S. Oklahoma rolled over and upside down like a beached whale, her red bottom showing. Motor launches and all sorts of power craft running up and down the channel like ants. They were performing all sorts of duty, but mostly casualty retrieval. I was joined by other sailors and officers walking down there to take a break and see what was going on. We all cried unashamedly in front of each other as we began to realize the enormity of the moment. Complete and utter destruction to what before they had thought to be the invincible United States Fleet. All done in a period of 1 hour and 50 minutes of combat. I remembered being offered a drink. It was straight ethyl alcohol 180 proof. Ordinarily one ounce would have put me on my back. That night two or three did nothing. After about a half-hour of relief; back to work at the Nurse's quarters. By that time, casualties had filled the downstairs and upstairs. The basement had been used for the dead. We would take a body, fingerprint one Form N, place it somewhere on the remains and carry it down to the cellar. They couldn't get a stretcher up and down stairs, it was too difficult and took time. Instead two of us would pick up a body, sometimes by ourselves, and carry it downstairs. The bodies were laid out on the floor with little aisles between them. Finally, because of so many, they were "stacked" one on top of another, trying to maintain the aisles. Not always well done. Remember the Laboratory location? At the next corner? Well, directly behind it between it an the tennis courts were a stack of bodies in the open. All Japanese. One of the Japanese planes that had been hit, crashed on the tennis court, slid across it into and under the house of the Chief Master-at-Arms Elkins. One body was still in the plane, the other, decapitated in half, was in the street. All ended up on the pile. Shortly after dark that same night, an air raid signal was sounded and all hell broke loose with anti-aircraft fire. It scared the hell out of me as it seemed like the whole place was on fire. The planes were directly over head and everybody who could, tried to find cover. I ran down the stairs to the cellar and stooped to look out a basement window culvert. I could see the fire of the guns and finally a plane seemed to be hit .......Then, all at once, ...silence..........At this point I realized where I was and it was completely dark with no lights. Believe it or not , one CAN smell Death. I did, and promptly panicked. I tried to get to the stairs leading up to the first floor, light and the living. I slipped, fell over corpses, scrambled over more and finally got to the stairs and up. Upstairs in the light, I had difficulty in realizing where I was. I can remember even to this present day the condition of my uniform, the odor, ...and part of an intestine hanging from my shoelaces. (Incidentally, the aircraft that was shot down was one of our own fighters that had flown in from carriers off-shore returning to Pearl Harbor). I watched one of the young pilots die later that night on the operating table and remember the pilot's groaning... "why did you shoot at me?" What happened later that night was another nightmare. I was detailed to take a truck load of the bodies to the Nuuanu Cemetery in downtown Honolulu. There were 26 bodies loaded on the 5 ton stake body truck. We heard rumors that the Japanese Army was landing troops on the beaches. This did not make our task that much more delightful. During the "air-raid" our anti-aircraft guns were firing "fixed" ammunition at the planes and when they missed they landed in downtown Honolulu killing civilians and destroying property in the Maikiki area. Of a continuing and deep concern of mine, was my wife. There was no news that one could trust. The only thing we knew was what came out of the rumor mill; and that was the Japanese had landing parties. This had prompted several incidents of friends shooting at friends that night. The only way to describe the events for that night and the following day was SNAFU. Events continued much the same for the first 72 hours before any of the corpsmen got any relief. I can't remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday following the raid when it was my turn to get to go home. I got a ride with a Pharmacists Mate Second Class who lived nearby. He dropped me off and I ran upstairs to meet my wife. She promptly had me strip off my bloody clothes, take a shower and hit the sack. That's all I remember until she woke me and said my friend was outside blowing the horn. I got up, put on a clean uniform, kissed my wife goodbye and headed back to the hospital and two or three more days of continuous work of caring for the injured and dying. We continued to work 4 hours on first aid, and then, 4 hours identifying the dead. The entire tennis courts behind the Hospital was covered with rows of bodies. Grave detail became my responsibility for the next few days. There were no such things as "bodybags" then. It was strictly wooden coffins made by the Japanese, and most of them too small for our American bodies. We would stuff bodies in a coffin, breaking arms, legs, etc. to get them in. Nail a copy of the damned Form N to it, and transport it to the Nuuanu Cemetery. There, it was placed in a common grave dug by a steam shovel, and covered over with a layer of dirt. The worst part was when we were on the docks, collecting the bodies of the "floaters". These were the bodies who had either drowned or came to the surface bloated. Many had extreme injuries displayed. As a matter of fact, that was the primary cause of death listed on the Form N--Diagnosis: "Multiple injuries, extreme, due to enemy action". As a matter of fact, many times, fingers had to have the skin pulled off the bone, and put our own fingers into the skin in order to get a finger print. The bodies stank so bad, the corpsmen had to wear gas masks. These bodies were put in those damn small coffins also. They were stacked one on top of the other and when it rained, the corpsmen would take cover under the stacks. One never was quite sure whether the source of the water dripping on them was from rain or residue leaking from the boxes. Needless to say the white uniforms were not ready for inspection. Enough now about death and destruction.............On returning to my home every fourth day, I had an excellent chance to see how the other half fared. I was told during the night of December 7th, Army patrols were roaming the streets enforcing blackout regulations. No one could show a light after sundown. Remember, everyone thought that Japanese forces had landed somewhere on the island. MaryJo said that military patrols would yell out if a light was showing and if it was not extinguished immediately, the military would fire into the house. The married girls sharing our apartment complex had banded together for safety. They had organized a "butcher knife brigade". They had heard that the Japanese were landing and raping and killing the women. They had decided to cut their long hair off. I wasn't quite sure what that would have done to protect them, but it showed their militancy. Food was hard to obtain. All the markets around that area were operated by the Japanese. All of them had closed and were serving Japanese out the back doors. MaryJo was not going to succumb to starvation because she was a haole (Caucasian). She told them to serve her or she would call the M.P.s. That did the trick and she was able buy groceries. The gathering of the girls included a "lady" from across the street who was a "working girl". There was no stigma attached during this crisis. However, as an aside..........many of the "ladies of the night" who worked in the "hotels" on Hotel Street, Beretania Street and River Street in Honolulu, volunteered as nurses' aides at the naval hospital. They would work side by side with our Navy Nurses and Corpsmen in the burn wards. These were our worst casualties. They carried bed pans, help debride body burn wounds and generally performed extremely valuable tasks. That was until the Navy Wives Association heard of this and required that they be expelled from the wards. |
Information provided by Jack & MaryJo Hammett. |
