Andrew Hoover US Navy US Navy Receiving Station

I had transferred from the USS Astoria on November 29, 1941, to the US Navy Receiving Station at Pearl Harbor Hawaii for further transfer to a Naval Air Station at Palmyra Island.  The receiving station was located just inside the main gate to Pearl Harbor.  On Sunday Morning, December 7, 1941, I had come down to the main floor of the receiving station and had gone through the food line and completed my breakfast and was relaxing in the lounge area of the same large room when I heard the first Japanese planes go over on their way to drop their torpedoes toward the battleships on Battleship Row. I hurried to a doorway on the harbor side of the building and witnessed a Japanese plane machine gun a motor launch in the harbor as he prepared to launch his torpedo at the battle wagons.  I then went to a second floor where there was an armory to look for a weapon to fire at the planes.  There were no weapons in the armory, so I went to a window that looked out on the harbor and I witnessed the battleship USS Arizona blow up. There was a tremendously loud explosion and a large column of water and material shot skyward.  This column seemed to hang suspended for many seconds and then fell back down.  There were fires and flames all around Battleship Row at this time and there was a vast cloud of black smoke.  There were Japanese planes all around in the sky.  I two at the moment they were shot out of the air.  One plane spiraled to the ground and blew up; the other plane was flying along and suddenly burst into flames and continued to fly while engulfed in flames.  I went to a basement area of the receiving station, which had a back door that opened on a street level.  There were five or six seamen there from a Destroyer and we all discussed what we could do to help fight the Japanese surprise attack.  While at this location, a man in civilian clothes, who I assumed was a Navy yard worker, came in the back door.  He stated that he had a flat bed truck outside if any of us wished to go aboard a ship to help in fighting the Japanese planes.  Two seamen got in the cab with the driver and the other three men and me got on the backside of the truck and we proceeded through the Navy yard to the pier 1010 dry dock where the USS Pennsylvania and the Destroyers Cassin and Downes were in dry dock. We all proceeded up the gangway and across the deck of the Pennsylvania and past an anti-aircraft gun.  The men on this gun told us to get below, as there was a second wave of bombers coming over.  We all went through a doorway and into a compartment that I assumed was the Marine Quarters as there was a marine in the compartment getting ready to go on duty.  This Marine told us to go through a watertight door, which led to a ladder and a lower deck.  After I went through this door, the men with me closed the door behind me and I went down to the next deck.  Just as I stepped off the ladder, there was a loud explosion and I was nearly thrown to the deck from the blast. Then the light were also out and a Chief Petty Officer came with a flashlight and said he needed help with clipping ammunition for 50 caliber machine guns.  I went into a small room and was given a flashlight and began putting 50 caliber bullets into belts about six feet long.  Other sailors would carry these belts up to the guns on the upper decks.  We clipped this ammunition until the attack was over.  When it was over, I had clipped 10,000 rounds into belts.  I was then told to go topside and help clean up where the bomb had hit.  It was a 500-pound bomb and it had exploded in the room that I had gone through and had exploded right where the Marine and the men I had come aboard with had stood.  Altogether, this bomb killed thirty-five men, including the men I had come aboard with.  I went to the officer of the deck and told him that I was not a member of the crew of the Pennsylvania and that I should be getting back to the receiving station where I was temporarily stationed.  He stated that they would take care of that later and that I should go down on the dock and help with passing ammunition that was coming from the USS California. The line passing ammunition consisted of men standing shoulder to shoulder from a motor launch to the ship.  I felt that I was unneeded and went up to a bathroom up away from the dock.  The doorway to this bathroom was away from the dock, so when I was through, I left to make my way back to the receiving station through the Navy yard.  It was about a mile walk. When I got back to the receiving station, there was a group of men being mustered outside the receiving station and a man with a clipboard reading off names.  I assumed it was a muster of the men from the receiving station, so when he had finished reading the names, I went up to him and said that he had not read my name.  He asked me my name and when I told him what my name was, he said, "you have been listed as missing in action, you better go to the office and tell them where you have been." At the office, they stated that my parents were notified that I was missing in action.  The Navy Department never did notify my parents that I was okay.  It was only when my parents received a personal letter from me on December 23rd, sixteen days after Pearl Harbor, that they knew I was still alive and well.  One of the men I saw jump out of the motor launch that was being machine gunned, was from the Pennsylvania and he swam ashore and went back to the Pennsylvania and was put to work carrying belts of fifty caliber ammunition up to the machine guns, the next time I saw this man was in 1994 in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors.  The other man in the motor launch died at the scene of the machine gunning of the launch.  I have never learned the names of the other sailors who went aboard the Pennsylvania that morning.  They died at the scene of the bomb that hit the Pennsylvania. I met another man who was on board the USS Pennsylvania that morning.  I also met him in Las Vegas, Nevada.  His name was Richard McCue.  Unfortunately, he was too sick with Alzheimer's disease to be able to converse with me.  On the morning of December 7, 1941, he was manning a fifty-caliber machine gun and was credited with shooting down two and a half planes.  He hit the third plane and a crane operator knocked the plane out of the air.  Richard McCue died of Alzheimer's Disease in 2000. The genuine heroes that day, were men like Richard McCue, those who died at Pearl Harbor and the many Army, Air Corps, Marine and Coast Guard men who manned the guns to fight the Japanese planes.

Information provided by Andrew Hoover.