William Edward Koonce US Navy USS Vestal

The following is an excerpt from background tapes that my father, William Edward Koonce, recorded several years ago and I recently transcribed.  I tried to retain the "flavor" of the tapes by not correcting grammar, etc.  Also, some things were not clearly understood and may be misinterpreted or misspelled. So me and about ten of us were told we were going to the USS Vestal.  They didn't say what that was.  They just told us we were going to be assigned to that and they said it was in San Pedro, California, which is close to Los Angeles, Long Beach /Los Angeles area.  We went from San Diego to Naval Air Station.  I thought at first that that's where we were going.  We didn't know too much about anything.  We stayed there two or three days.  I guess they were just waiting to get transportation for us; I don't know what.  Anyway, they took us by bus from there to San Pedro.  We saw that old scow and it was in dock and it had a lot of work.  Man, it had lines and workmen all over the thing.  They were doing some repair work and modifying it, getting it ready to do more work than what it could do.  They told us it was a repair ship.  It was a mess when we got aboard that thing.  The first thing they put us to doing was painting the decks, painting everything; painting the bulkheads, going through all the compartments, cleaning the thing up after these workmen.    They were cutting with torches, taking out bulk-heads, putting in some more machinery on it, a lot of everything.  I guess about two or three weeks after we got aboard, they put a big cable around the thing.  It was a magnetic cable, supposed to keep magnetic mines from attaching to the ship.  Seems like they had found out the Japanese were using some kind of magnetic mine.  Anyway we put this big old cable, that thing was about 4" in diameter, it was kind of flexible and it hooked up to the electricity some way and kind of made a repulsion of magnetic minessupposed to anyhow.  They put it all around that thing.  It went all the way around the ship.  They had a place for it, that was part of the modifications.  They had a place fixed for it and we had to carry that silly thing.  We got all the men out there and you just picked up all you could pick upthat was about 2' of the thing.  And they had us strung out along it so close 'til we were almost stepping on each other carrying that thing aboard and putting it in its place.    After they got it in placeand I never even remembered noticing it anymore after we got the thing put in placeI was assigned to the deck force.  Some more of us "boots" had just come aboard; they'd got some more people, about 100 I think, and they assigned most of us to the deck force.  They had the 1st Division and 2nd Division.  I wound up in the 2nd Division.  Then, after they got that cable on there and they got it kind of cleaned up a little bit, we took that thing out for a trial run. (GK: dad chuckles) Before we even got passed the breakwater, I got sick.  That thing was rolling, it was top-heavy; they'd put some guns on the thing and it was as top-heavy as it could be and rolled like nobody's business in just any kind of a little swell.  So, before we got behind the breakwater, I got sick.  Now, I wasn't the only one.  There was a whole bunch of usmost of us "boots" got sick.  Well, they had us painting, cleaning the decks, and washing them down, getting it ship-shape.  So I just got me a big old bucket, my bucket of paint and paint brush, and I'd just vomit into that bucket and then after a while I'd empty the thing, wash it out and start all over again.   That went on for about 2 days, that trial run.  Finally, I got over it and I felt good after that.  As long as we were out there, I felt fine.  We came back in and stayed and the engineers did more work on it.  They changed whatever they wanted changed.  They wrote squawks (?) and everything, it was kind of a shake (?) crew and they fixed that.  Then we took off for San Francisco to get somethingI don't even remember what it was.  But anyhow we went to San Francisco, up above San Francisco to Vallejo, California to a Marine Base or Navy Base.  They went there to get something they needed.  I guess a machine shop or something they needed.  Anyhow, we went up there, picked that up and then we headed for Honolulu.  We got out there about the 1st of March, I guess, of 1941. I guess now I ought to tell you a little bit about the history of the ship, as much as I can remember.   Anyway, it had been an old coaling ship (delivered coal). I think it was a pretty good size ship.  It was over 300 feet long and, I believe, 66 feet wide at the beam of the main deck.  It had kind of a forecastle deckthis was kind of a half deck that was forward of the bridge area.  It was a place from the main deck called a well deck right in front of where the bridge was in the super structure.  That's where all the officers and captains slept; they had all their cabins up there.  This ship had 600 people, so you can figure it was a pretty good size ship.  Outside of about a hundred of themwhich most of that new bunch that came aboard (we were that hundred that worked on the deck force), and some engine room people that  (they were the engineers) that ran the ship down below decksthe rest of them were old hands that had been on that ship.  That ship had been to China some time and those people were what they called "plank owners" in the Navy.  Them rascals had been on there 15, some of them 20, years on that same ship.  It was a good repair ship and they'd been on there a long time.  They were good machinists and there was all kinds of machinists, foundry people.  There was, I believe, about 100 Chiefs and about 100 officers included in that 600 people.  So that was a bunch of people on that thing to do all those specialty jobs they had to do.  What we did was work on battleships, mostly.  I guess they could work on any ship, but they worked on battleships mostly.  They could cut down the old battleships' mast.   Some of them had what they called a cage mast, a big old round mast, kind of cage-like, and they still had some of them.  But we could cut those masts down and put on the new type masts, the lower, shorter masts and make them look more streamline and do all kind of modifications like that.  They had a foundry and everything on that ship.  They could make anything.  I mean they had some machinists that were good.  Like I said, they'd been doing it for 15-20 years.   Nearly everybody on there, except that 100 of us that came aboard as "new boots", they'd been on there a long time.  The foc'sle deck and the super structure deck, up where the "old man" walked around itit was a boat deck (we had two boats on either side of the super structure area)it was a fairly good-sized area.  That's where they did all the information, the steering of the ship, the connings part of the ship was all done there in that area.  That's where the big wheel was that you steered the ship with; it was all enclosed.  You had windows all in the front of it and on the sides and hatches to open out on either side and there was a deck on either side of that.  And it was all wood, and that forecastle deck was wood.  I don't remember exactly how big that foc'sle deck was but it was pretty good size.  That's where the anchor was and they store stuff down in the holds.   They had some crew quarters that were underneath that foc'sle deck and also the Mess Hall.  On down below the Mess Hall were the main deck and the laundry room, where I was working at that particular time, was right below that and there was a deck below that.  The machine shop and foundry was below that, so you could figure there was three or four decks down on each one of them and they all had something in them, crew quarters and places.  But there were so many people on that thing until they just issued us a cot and we slept up on deck.  They had awnings stretched around on those well decks.  That's what they called those well decks, it was an area that was on the main deck and then went up to the foc'sle deck, which was about 8-10 feet high. And then the super structure would go up, I imagine, 20-30 feet to the top of it, cause it had some places up on top of where the wheel house was and the Captain's cabin.  They had a place up there you could go up and shoot the stars and a lookout area up there above that.  So it was pretty high.  Anyhow, between that and the foc'sle was what they called the well deck that was the main deck.  They had awnings stretched across that.  Back aft, they had one of them same deals, they had a raised deck back there, called a poop deck and they had a 5 inch 41 gun back there.  That was the biggest thing we had.  We had one more 3 inch 50 that was back there on a deck up a little bit higher.  But they called that deck the poop deck on some ships and it was a raised area, higher than the main deck.  Also, down underneath it was all the steering mechanisms, rudder controls and all that.  They had winches back there.  You had booms on the thing to bring the boats aboard and also back there on the aft part of the ship, you had a place to carry two 40-45 foot fancy motor boats that the Captain and the Executive Officer used.  One of them, called the gig, was the Captain's, and then they had another one for the rest of the officers on the ship to use, the Executive Officer included.  So we had room back there for those and more things, but I don't remember what all was back there.  Anyway, we could put that right up there on deck and lock them down and go to sea with them. But when we were out there at Pearl, we had a boom that went out from back aft.  It went out about 30 feet and it had lines that went down from that boom and ladders and you could tie up several boats to it.  We also had some more boats up along side the super structure.  These were boats used (whale boats, they called them) for the mail boat, and one for the...you know, if you got out at sea and your ship got sunk for some reason or another, you could get in those whale boats, supposedly and those other boats.  Every boat was used and they had some life rafts that were made so that you could hang onto those.  All ships have that.  They had places up on the side of that super structure for those.  But when we were in port, and we were most of the time, all those were kept tied up to those booms back aft.  They had one on either side, I believe.  Anyway, the Captain's gig was always back there and on the way to Hawaii (it took us about a week to get over there), this Boatswains Mate...I was painting and I could paint good.  I could really use that paintbrush and I was a good worker...asked me how would I like to be in the Captain's gig.  I didn't know what that was and I asked, "What's that".  And he said "That's the Captain's special boat" and he showed it to me.  He took me back there and showed it to me.  Like I said it was about 40-45 feet long, it was a nice motor boat.  I mean, it was a keen-looking thing.  I told him yeah, I guess so.  So they put me on what they call as bow hook.  They had a man on the stern, one on the bow and one that run the boat, a coxson they called him.  He was the one that ran the boat, steered it and everything.  Then they had an engineer that kept the engine running.  There was four of us.  Three of us could sleep on that boat.  It had bunks in it and it had room for three of us to sleep.  Four could sleep, but the fourth man would have to sleep back there in the Captain's cabin.  There was a cabin back in the back fixed with seats all around that thing and real nice and plush and I imagine you could seat 6 or 7 people back there.  I don't remember how many could get on it, but I've seen quite a few back there on it or in the other boat which was just like it, only it wasn't quite as fancy.  We had all kind of sword pointing and stuff like that, fancy curtains around it.  It really shined, brass rails.  Everything was brass around the edge of the boat.  The deck was mahogany striped with white stripes and we kept that thing polished and shined like a brand new car.  We polished that brass a little bit every day.  They had these little plates, kind of grooved plates, to keep you from slipping where you stepped on to go down to the cabin aft and then one on the deck right there.  They were made out of brass and we polished those.  We wore sneakers on the boat so we wouldn't slip and fall off, which was pretty easy with the water spray getting on it a lot of times.  Anyway, the bow hookwe had a little long pole thing with a hook on the end of it called a bow hook and one for the stern.  The coxson, he'd bring the boat alongside the gangway for the Captain to get in it and we'd just reach out and hold on with that bow and stern hook, the two people, and hold it there until he got in.  And then away we'd go to take him to the dock.  The same thing happened when we got to the dock.  We had little lines.  We'd just hop out and stand at the stern.  We had the flag and a rail back there.  We'd stand back there until the coxson brought the boat alongside the dock and then we'd hop out there and we had a little line in our hand.  We'd hold the boat until the Captain went out.  And of course he got up and out, it didn't take him all day.  We tried to keep from ever touching the dock, because you'd scratch that boat a little bit if you did, so we kept it away from the dock as much as we could.  We'd let it come up there about six inches and he could step off without falling in.  They liked that.  He was real proud of that boat.  You could tell.  We had it shined all the time and he was real proud of it.  And of course, we were exclusively his.  I mean we didn't have to do nothing else but keep that boat clean.  And when we were underway at sea, our first job was to clean up that boat and clean the bottom of it.  We'd scrape it down and paint that thing every time we'd get it out to sea.  Then, if we didn't go to sea very often, which we didn't too much on that ship, we'd pick it up and put it in the little boat skids that we had up there for it and we'd scrape everything off that bottom and repaint that thing about every three months.  So it was kept in good shape.  He liked that real well.  Anyway, I stayed in that thing, I don't know, not too long.  I made Seaman 1st Class.  I went from boot camp. And after that, they made us Seaman 2nd Class.  That was $36 a month.  I went from $21 at boot camp to $36 after boot camp, after we made Seaman 2nd Class.  Then I made Seaman 1st Class; I studied and studied and studied and we had to go up against the whole fleet.  We had to go up against the people on board our ship that were recommended for Seaman 1st.  After we passed that, whoever was left had to go up against the fleet, then, to get your Seaman 1st.  But I knew that thing by heart and I passed it.  I made 4.0 on the thing; that's as much as you could make.  So I got my Seaman 1st and I got to kind of looking around.  I decided I wanted to do a little better, so they told me they'd give me the mail boat.  That was one of those old whaleboats and we'd go get the mail every day.  And we'd bring it back, then make two or three trips over there and back getting stuff.  Sometimes we'd take people over to the dock.  I didn't do that very long before I decided I didn't like that too much.  You got wet all the way over there and all the way back.  The spray would be hitting you, you know, the wind would be blowing and you just stayed wet most of the time over there and back.  So I didn't like that too much. Somebody told me they had an opening in the laundry and I might could get in it.  I went to see the Division Officer.  They had about six divisions on that ship.  Some weren't as big as others.  The deck force had two divisions and there was a third division of the engineers that ran the ship.  Then they had some gunner's mates and then they had some little divisions that didn't have too many men in them and this laundry thing was one of those.  It was kind of an auxiliary division.  I think it was Division 7, I'm not real sure.  Anyway, they didn't have very many people in it and at that time they didn't have any ratings.  You just were all Seaman 1st Class.  All of you got paid $40 a month extra for working in the laundry.  That was pretty good money, considering that Seaman 1st paid $54 a month.  Then they passed a law after that first year (just about the time the war started) that if you were overseas, and Hawaii was considered overseas, you'd get $10 more a month for being overseas.  So they passed that so we could have that.  Anyway, they gave us that and then I got $40 a month more for working in the laundry.  I could make $100 a month just doing extra stuff for some of the guys.  They'd come in there and want their uniforms washed and pressed so they could go ashore.  I'd do it because I didn't go ashore very much.  So I did it and they'd pay me.  Sometimes they'd want it real bad and I'd say I just couldn't get to it right away and they'd say they'd give me $5.  Finally, I'd go ahead and do it and they'd give it to me.  I'd try not to take that, because I usually just charged them $.50 for doing one.  But, man, they didn't care.  Some of them had money and they didn't care.  They'd give it to you.  They'd just throw you a $5 bill and say, "Thank you very much".  Of course, then you'd be obligated to do them again.  That's what they wanted, I guess.  I made quite a bit of money and I saved it all.  That's what I was doing. Now, we had a fire station and a general quarters station.   And then when we were underway and we didn't have so much to do, we could do a few other things; but most of the time we stayed in that laundry.  It was hot in that thing, too.  For 600 men, that was a lot.  We worked harder on Sunday than we did on any other day.  The only day we got off was half a day Friday and all day Saturday.  That was our day and that was usually spent doing something for somebody else, or cleaning up our own stuff and getting everything ready.  It was so hot out there, with those dryers going (great big dryers).  We had a mangler (you could put a whole garment in it and it would press that thing).  We called it the mangler 'cause if you weren't careful with it you'd bust a button.  We usually used it for undershirts and things that didn't have any buttons on them; and for the jackets that didn't have any buttons on them.  If they did have buttons, we could fold them where the buttons would be protected and run it through that mangler.  It did a good job of pressing them.  Then we pressed all the pants on big steam presses.  I got to where I could press about 11 pairs of pants an hour on them things.  I had two presses and you'd press around the waist of 2 pair of pants on those two presses.  Then you'd press the legs.  That's the way we'd do it and you could press about 11 pair an hour.  I had so many of those things to do and I had another guy doing the same thing.  We had 4 presses and this guy would run about the same amount, too.  Then we had one guy that did the officers' shirts.  We'd press the officers' shirts on the big press, then he did the cuffs and the collars with a hand iron and then folded them real neat and nice (the officers and chiefs).  So they kept us pretty busy with that.  \ I went into Honolulu about once a month.  There wasn't a whole lot to do.  We'd go to Waikiki Beach and we'd go to a restaurant and eat a regular meal.  You'd get tired of that regular Navy food, so we'd always go over and get us a good meal.  That's about all we did and walk around and look at everything.  There wasn't too much and they had lots of Shore Patrol over there.  They had the Army there and the Air Force was right next to us.  Hickam Field was right east of us, right on the edge of the ocean.  So, there was a lot of service people in that town.  They had a Shore Patrol and MPs on every corner.  They liked their job; they liked that shore duty there.  So they weren't about to lose it, and I mean, if you got out of line they'd let you know right quick and you'd wind up in the brig if you didn't watch yourself.  I didn't care too much about it after a while.  You'd see pretty much everything and I didn't go too often.   I guess we were there....let's see, we went out there in March of '41 and we came back to the States in September of 41.  Then we went back, you know we only stayed in the States a couple of weeks and then went back to Honolulu.  Sometime in November we made a little excursion around the island.  We went to Hilo, where the volcano is, over on the island of Hawaii, which was the Big Island.  We did the little deal on that and had some Hawaiian singers come aboard ship and put on a big show for us, and all that kind of stuff.  We did that about a week and then we went back and anchored at our fine old spot and started getting ready to do some work on them battleships. Of course, the war news was getting more severe in Europe all that time.  We were talking about what the Japanese could do.  We were always kind of wondering, you know.  Billy Mitchell had made a run on Pearl Harbor at some time or another and told them that if the Japs ever decided to bomb Pearl Harbor, that's the way they'd do it.  And that's exactly what they did.  They used just exactly what he said.  They'd picked up on that and they used that.  But, it was confusion....  But Pearl Harbor, when you come into it, you come into it from the east and you just had a narrow channel.  On your right as you're coming into it, you'd be going kind of west, there was a bunch of smaller boats and mine sweepers and destroyer escorts and all kinds of auxiliary little ships on the edge all the way around.  Then they had some big dry docks.  They could put a battleship in those dry docks.   The Pennsylvania happened to be in that morning.  It had two destroyers in there with it.  So you can figure how big those dry docks were, with a big battleship and two destroyers in that one dry dock.  And they had more than one dry dock.  I don't remember, but I think they had two big dry docks like that.  They might have had some smaller ones.  Anyhow, you go on around to your right and there was cruisers, just little bit bigger ships.  And there was some more repair ships.  They had four repair ships and I believe they were all there.  I remember the Medusa was there.  It was a repair ship.  It was our sister ship, I believe.  It was anchored somewhere close by.  They had cruisers, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, all along there until what they called the Fleet Landing area.   Then you just keep going on around to the right, in that direction and you'd be circling back toward the left in that direction, because there was an island right in the center of it.  That's where the Navy Air Base was, right on that island, Ford Island, they called it.  If you see a picture of it you can see what I'm talking about.  Then on the east side of Ford Island, that's where all the battleships tied up.  They had some big ol' buoys placed in there and the battleship could tie up to that.  Boats could come alongside and take people ashore to the fleet landing.  All the battleships were kind of in a row, nice, laid out just right for them to go in there where they could hit them real good.  Anyway, they were alongside that.  I believe there were 8 battleships counting the Pennsylvania, which was in dry dock.  Normally, there were two battleships tied up together.  There'd be one tied to the buoy and then another battleship outside of it, tied to it.  That's the way they were.  We were tied up to the Arizona.  We went alongside that thing on December the 6th, 5th or 6th.  We were going to start work on it Monday morning, on the 8th.  We had tied up with our bow to their stern.  I had gone over there two or three times to see some guys.  I'd met some guys and I went over there to talk to them.  Early in the morning I'd usually be up walking around the deck and I'd see these guys and I walk over there and talk to them.  I can't remember now, but the Nevada was right up...we could see the Nevada; it was in front of us, on our bow.  But she was at the stern of the Arizona.  Then the Oklahoma and the Maryland, I believe were astern of us and forward of the Arizona.   Then the Tennessee was up there; the California.  I can't remember them all any more.  I believe the Tennessee was kind of by itself, but the California was tied up alongside something else, now I can't remember which one; the West Virginia, maybe I guess it was.  I have to get a map now and look at them.  There's all kinds of books around that shows where they were.  But they were in a real good position and if you look at it just right, why, the airplanes come in from the ocean and come right across Hickam Field and right over there and man, they were right lined up for them.  They couldn't miss.  They were lined right up by those battleships.  Of course they came in from different directions, too.  The high level bombers would come in.  I may be getting a little ahead of myself here.  But we're getting up to about there anyway.  Most of the officers went ashore on the weekends and stayed all weekends.  Officers and Chiefs and 1st Class could stay overnight in Honolulu.  All the rest of the enlisted people had to be back to the ship at one o'clock.  Of course, we had gone ashore that night.  Nearly all of the laundry crew had gone ashore that night.  It was real easy.  The week before, we also went ashore.   We had went ashore easy, no problem getting by the guards at the exit to the naval station.  They had Marines on the gates.  The week before we went and we had to show our pass and had to have our uniform on and be checked by the Marines and walk right up close to them.   That Saturday, the 6th of December, we walked right by them, about 20 yards from them and just waved and they waved us right on through and didn't even look at a pass to see if we had one or not.  It was the same way coming back in.  We had to be back in at 1:00, so we all came back in.  I don't remember what all we did.  We ate and fiddled around: went to some little shooting galleries and did a little shooting at them; not much of anything else.  We came on back and caught the last boat, I believe, back to the ship before 1:00.  Patterson and I worked in the laundry together and we got up real early every morning.  Of course, Sunday was a big day for us.  This was when we did the officers' clothing and it was a big day.  So we started to check all that stuff in.  It was all sitting outside the laundry door; we started checking it all in.  They had their names in the laundry bag and everything.  So we started checking that all in and checking it out, make sure we counted everything.  Then we went up and ate breakfast as soon as it was ready.  They passed the word and we went up and ate and came back down and started again.  But before that, I went over on the Arizona and talked to a couple of the guys I knew, then came back.  Then after breakfast, him and I went back down and started checking that stuff in again.  About that time was when we got that fire drill.  Next to this laundry was another compartment about the size of the laundry, a pretty good size compartment.  It had all the lockers in it for the ship's crew.  Not all of them, but I mean, it had a bunch of them stored there.  We could use them, keep our clothes there.  They had a lock on them and everything.   There was room around those locker areas to sleep in there and we did that part of the time, us laundry people.  We slept right outside the laundry.  We'd just put a cot down and sleep on it.  Sometimes we'd go up on deck, it was cool enough.  If it was raining or something like that, we'd sleep down there, most of the time, in that compartment.  And all that ship had these big ol' portholes.  You could crawl through one of them easily, unless you were a big fat guy like I am now.  You could crawl right through them portholes without any problem. Remember, I was still weighing 130 pounds so I wasn't very big.  They tried to assign you a fire station that was close to your work area so you didn't have to go very far to do what you had to do.  And they had fire hoses all over the place.  You manned those fire hoses if you needed to.  They had people assigned to them.  Our job was assigned to that laundry area and that compartment outside of there.  He and I were supposed to close those portholes, and if need be, we'd close the hatch going up into the mess hall area, if there was a fire down below decks.  The ship had an Officer of the Deck and a messenger and a Quartermaster on duty all the time.  And a Bosun Mate, usually 3rd Class, called a coxswain, would pass the word, whatever the officer wanted.  If it was chow time or they needed a messenger or man the boats, or whatever, he'd pass that word through the ship with one of those Bosun whistles. ( I've got one of them somewhere that I used.)  He'd blow that thing and pass the word and everybody'd go do whatever it was that you needed to do, if it applied to you.  If it didn't, well, you just forgot about it.   Anyhow, he passed the word that it was a fire drill and then the gong went off.  Gong, gong.  Big klaxon going off.  Of course we knew something was going wrong.  We just knew it was a fire drill.  They had so many of them 'til we just knew that's what it was.  They wouldn't do nothing else on Sunday.   We didn't figure they would.  He passed the word, and sure enough, it was a fire drill.  Well, we ran (Patterson had the ones in the laundry and I had the ones next to it) and we were closing them.  And I looked up there on the Arizona and they were getting on the guns.  I could see those guys.  Their klaxon was going, too.  I could hear it.  You could hear those things for a mile, nearly.  Anyway, it was going off, too and so I looked up there and they were getting on guns and I told him, "Hey Pat, they're going to general quarters up here.  They're having general quarters up there."  So he looked out and he said, "They sure are."  They were getting on guns but they were kind of laughing and pointing up in the air.  But in a few minutes they started firing, while we were closing all them portholes.  I said, "They're firing." Then I said, "But they're laughing.  I wonder what in the world's going on." So about that time the messenger (Bosuns Mate) came back through and he said "Belay that order and go to general quarters." And then he said, "This is no drill."  And he just kept passing that word.  Well, we finished closing those portholes and ran up the ladder onto the mess deck.  And just as I hit the mess deck, I was a little ahead of him, and I guess I took about three steps and boy, kutch-kutch-kutch, down through there about 15 feet from us, came a bomb.  I mean it went right through the foc'sle, right in front of us.  It killed six people, I think, and went on down through 4 or 5 decks into the steel hold.  It had hit that steel hold and tangled up in it and blew up down there.  Didn't do a whole lot of damage, just went splat on through those decks.  That ship didn't have very much plating.  I think ½ inch thick was about as thick as anything, maybe an inch.  But that was all.  And a bomb like that would just go right on through it, like paper.  They were big heavy bombs and they were armor piercing, so they were made to just go right through a thin deck.   If it hadn't gotten tangled up in that steel hold, that thing would have gone all the way through up there and we sure enough would have sunk.  It wasn't too long before one hit back aft and we were sinking.  But anyway, I ran up there, and there was a guy lying there with his leg blown off.  A corpsman was there and he said, "I'll take care of this."  There was two or three more wounded but they told me they'd take care of it and told me to go to my general quarters station.  So I took off for that and as I went out on this well deck, a bomb must have hit into the turret area of the Arizona next to us.  There was a 5" .38 mounted up there for anti-aircraft purposes.  Well, it must have gone through right close to that, because it blew up right then.  Just blew up that crew and everything.  As I went across that well deck, we had awnings stretched across the well deck between the foc'sle and the bridge area.  It caught them on fire.  But I went right on through the passageway out to the stern and that awning was also on fire.  I was still running and of course everybody else was.  I was going to my battle station which was all the way aft.  I was supposed to be a third shell man and a substitute trainer.  Well, as I went up the ladder up into the gun area which was up high, back right on the stern of the ship in a gun tub area, they called it.  It was mounted right in the center of it and had ready boxes on either side of it, so you could just open them ready boxes and they had those shells, 3" .50.  Those shells were about 3 ½ - 4 feet long and the shell itself, the bullet part of it, was made to explode.  We had an adjustment on the nose of it that you could set it to 2 ½ seconds or 3 seconds, 4 seconds, 5 seconds.  We had some set for 2 ½ and some set for 5 and maybe some more, I don't remember, in between.  But most of the time, you either used one or the other.  Most of the time you used that 2 ½ second fuse.  The third shell man set that as he took it out of the ready box.  He'd set that at whatever they told him, whatever the gun captain or gunnery officer would tell him to set it.  There was always a gunnery officer there, too.  But anyway when I got up there, as I went up the ladder to it, the Captain was coming down.  He'd beat me back there.  Of course he was closer to it than I was.  He had gone back there right at the start because he, I guess, had been up on the bridge.  He may have been outside walking along a place he always used to walk.  He may have been out there and seen what was happening.  So he went back there because that was the only anti-aircraft gun we had.  He was starting to come down and he let me up saying something like, "Come on up, son."  And I did and as he started down, there was a big blast from the Arizona and a big piece of metal hit our gear locker, which was right next to the gun (pretty close to the gun).  I mean a big hunk of metal.  It just hit up the side of that thing and fell down on the deck down there.  That blast blew him over the side as he was on the way down the ladder.  But he wasn't hurt too bad and he swam back over to the gangway, which was on that side, not very far.  He swam over to the gangway and got back on board ship and took control again.  Of course, that was his job.  In the meantime, there was some fire which had gone down into the Chiefs' quarters, which was right underneath the fantail.  Since we had 100 of them, there was a whole lot of Chiefs on that ship, they had a big area down underneath the stern area and had quarters down there.  It had went down in there and some of them, there was a few Chiefs still on board ship, some of the specialist types, the machinists, ship fitters and such as that, they got swinged a little, I think.  Some of them thought the fire had come down in there.  When that bomb hit pretty close to where they were at, they went out through the porthole and jumped in the water.  Some of them got in such a big hurry, one or two guys, until they fell on a boat that was outside.  Those boats were tied up out there close to those portholes where they were at and they fell on those boats.  Some of them got hurt that way.   Some of them jumped over the side and didn't watch where they were going and all that kind of stuff.  But, anyway, I went up to my gun station.  The regular trainer apparently didn't make it and they put me on there as trainer.  Then they had a pointer and we started firing.  I don't think we hit anything.  We hadn't had any practice to amount to anything, very little.  You had to move those things manually.  They had a wheel-like deal; you put both hands on it, with two little knobs on it.  You just turned those things one way or the other, you know.  The trainer moved the gun right and left and the pointer moved it up and down and the pointer also fired it.  He had three ways to fire it.  He just pushed down on a foot lever, which he also had his foot on it.  And then he had a trigger, which was a mechanical trigger and it also was hooked up to an electrical firing device; one of those would fire that thing.  We never did have a hang fire; even on the next ship I got on.  We had the same 3" .50s.  I never had a hang fire.  It always fired because I always used all three of them at the same time myself, when I got to be pointer. Which I did right away after we got on the next ship.  It was easy, seemed to me like.  Just mash them off.  Anyway, we fired off what we had, then we came down off there because they were trying to get the ship underway.  They were having us chop the lines in two with axes and stuff.  There was nobody over on the Arizona that could help us. I mean, it was fire from one end of that thing to the other, so there wasn't anybody over there to throw the lines off.  So we started chopping them in two with axes.  Everybody. They got everybody they could on them.  In the meantime they were trying to get some people off the Arizona that was up in the mast area.  They had a gun platform up pretty high, a machine gun platform.  And they were trying to get those guys down and it was burning the rope and everything.  A guy got the Navy Cross for holding on to the burning rope while he got those guys down out of there.  There was six Navy Crosses awarded on our ship that day.  And, of course, the Old Man, he got the Medal of Honor for being blown over the side, then coming back and taking charge of his ship.  He was a Commander at the time, so he made Captain and was transferred to the San Francisco, a heavy cruiser, after that, for doing that.  He got a promotion out of it and got the "big medal", too.  There was a lot of commendations.  I got a little ol' commendation written up for myself.  And I don't really know what all I did.  I didn't panic.  I don't think I had sense enough to, maybe.  I was scared, I know that.  But I didn't really panic.  I went where I was supposed to and then whenever they grabbed me, I helped put some wounded over the side of the boat that  come alongside.  And they told me to help get the wounded down there.  We had to hand them down, you know, and get them down the side of the ship without hurting them.  There was one lieutenant, he had his foot just dangling.  It was blowed off right at the ankle.  It was just the skin holding it on.  He was, of course, in shock.  He was trying to walk on one foot and we were helping him down.  So they told me to climb down there with him and put a tourniquet on his leg.  All I had was my belt and they said, "Put that on", to stop the blood flow.  I did that.  Then we went and picked up some of those guys back aft that had been hit when that bomb went through.  One of them was one of my buddies.  He was just 17 years old.  He was on a 3-½ year hitch and they were making a machinist out of him.  I believe he had already finished high school so he was a pretty sharp kid.  He'd sit around and tell me what he'd like to do and what all he was going to do.  He was eventually, I think, to go to Annapolis, if he could get appointed to Officers Candidate School.  He had lots of good plans and he'd sit around and tell me.  Well, he was hit real bad and I helped get him in the boat.  I was holding him.  I never will forget what he said to me.  He said, "I'm cold".  He kept telling me "I'm cold" and that was the last thing he said to me.  And he died and I never will forget that.  We took them to this Aiea landing.  In the meantime we were staying alongside the ship.  They got the ship underway and it wasn't moving very fast.  They couldn't get up enough steam in that short period of time, but it was moving a little bit.  So we were staying alongside, taking those wounded off.  They were heading it out, kind of northwest a little bit to a shallow area and ran it aground.  I think a tug came along and helped us.  I believe one tug got blew up about the time it tried to help us, but there was another come and tried to help us and got us moving a little bit faster.  We took, I think, three loads of the wounded off of that.  Of course we were picking them up in the water.  There was some off the Arizona.  We were getting them out of the water.  That water was on fire.  There was oil all around the thing and you had to be careful that you didn't get your boat on fire. But, we were trying to pick up those too, and get them in the boat.  We took about three bunches over there.  And then about the third bunch, the boatswains mate that had been my boatswains mate when I first went aboard that ship (I can't remember his name)...he must have been ashore.  He took over that boat whenever he saw what was happening.  He was a good handler.  He didn't panic or anything.  He' d tell everybody what to do, you know, and got things going and moving.  So he told me, he said, "Go with that lieutenant and see about him and come back and let me know how he's doing."  And he said, "They may need you up there, too.  So if they do, just stay."  He said, "We've about got everybody."  So I said o.k. and I went up there to see about that lieutenant.  They had him sedated by that time.  They'd got a medical corpsman in there and they'd got him sedated.  They were getting him ready to go out in an ambulance, if they could get one.  They had a telephone in that area and so they called for an ambulance.  It did come pretty quick and took them guys out.  Of course the ambulances were tied up everywhere, you know.  But it was a little while before they came.  Then I went back down to the dock and told him about it.  And so he told me to go back and stay up there because they might need you. So I went up there and the rumors was flying that the Japs were landing on the island somewhere.  I believe they said they were landing at Barber's Point, and I don't know now where Barber's Point was, but it must have been a place where they thought they were landing.  I don't know what was happening, but anyhow, we got that word and they gave me...I didn't have a shirt on, just had my pants on...and they gave me two big ol' bandoleers of cartridges and a rifle and a helmet.  And they told me to go along the fence.  There was a fence there between this officers' recreation area and a big cane field; a big high fence, six-foot fence, chain-link type.  Right up above us, pretty high up above us in the middle of that cane field was a whole bunch of oil, a tank farm, storage tanks.  They were up above us and I could just imagine what would happen if one of them planes hit one of them things, you know and all that oil would come streaming down there and it'd be on fire.  I thought about that a whole lot myself.  Anyway, they told us to put bayonets on our rifles and I did.  We had that little bit of training in boot camp and I put it on there.  And I made up my mind that I wasn't going to use that thing unless it was the last resort.  I was going to shoot that thing as long as I could if they did come in there.  'Cause I knew I wouldn't have no chance up against no trained soldier with a bayonet, cause they really gave them training and I knew if they were landing troops, they'd be well trained for that.  They'd been fighting since 1930, anyway over there in China.  So I knew they'd have some good well-trained soldiers, you know, to be able to take the thing.    So I didn't have any intention of using that bayonet, not until I didn't have anything else.  So, I marched up and down that fence for a little while and they relieved me on that.  Then they sent me out there and they told me that the Army was trying to set up some 37mm anti-aircraft guns around the perimeter there and they didn't have enough people and they wanted me to help them.  So we went over there and dug kind of a hole for them to set that thing down in and got ammunition.  We carried ammunition for them and stuff like that.  Then I went back to the officers' area and did another watch.  About 11:00, the Japs left and they didn't come back, but they thought they were.  It was still confusion.  They were shooting at everything that moved.  If an airplane came over, he got shot at.  It was mostly our airplanes then, but they thought they were theirs.  An airplane would fly over, and they had some of them old patrol planes that could land on the water.  Well, they could land on the water and they'd come right up the channel right there and go up on Ford Island.  Of course it was all on fire, the hangers were on fire on it and everything.  So they'd come in just looking it over, I guess.  See, they'd been out patrolling, trying to find that Jap fleet.  When they came in, they'd get shot at.  One time they shot one of them down.  I thought that was terrible because I recognized it was one of our own, a PBY.  I tried to holler at the guys to tell them, but, shoot, they were firing away at the thing.  You know, one or two guys start panicking and firing, so the whole bunch would start.  Some of them started shooting with a rifle and then they'd open up with those machine guns and they'd knock them down.  And it happened during the night.  We stayed out there and they didn't come back.  Of course the rumors were still flying all over the place, but they didn't come back.  We found out later that they  (Japs) were all set to make another launch.  I think 300 planes was in the original raid and they were kind of strung out.  So, they did such a good job, one guy was reporting all that stuff, and they knew Halsey was out with the carriers.  Halsey had about 3 or 4 carriers, I don't remember.  He had them all out.  He was down south there running all over the ocean trying to find the Jap fleet and he couldn't find them.  He thought they were coming in from Midway, so he was down there.  Of course, nothing against Halsey.  He just was one of these hot-rod deals and he did a lot of good things. We needed them kind of people, that were "gung-ho", "go get'm boy".  Well that's what he was doing; only he was in the wrong place and he never found anything.  Of course, they got a couple of little submarines.  A couple of midget submarines got in the harbor, too, I don't think they did any damage, but they made everybody think they did.  That caused a big ruckus too.  They captured one of them.  I think they sank the other one.  Then a destroyer saw one out there early that morning and sunk it and then still they didn't get the message.  That was about 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning and they still didn't get the message, you know.   They thought that wasn't too unusual.  I don't know why.  I think they wanted it to happen.  But anyway we stayed over there at that Aiea landing area through that evening and that night.  Then they came got us and took us back to the ship and by that time they'd started repairs.  We had divers aboard that ship that were good.  They could go down and weld underneath the water and all that.  They had been over the side and started putting a patch on that hole in the stern of the ship.  It didn't take them too long until they had a patch on that thing that would let us pump the water out of it, you know.  And there wasn't any damage in the engine room.  A bunch of pipes were busted back there where the bomb went through but it didn't take them too long to repair that and go around all that.  So they got that thing where they could pump the water out and got it up pretty level.   We couldn't do too much on board ship.  Just kind of help clean up everything.  So they grabbed up a working party.  They had an ammunition ship that had come in.  They had an area kind of south of where we were that was nothing but an ammunition depot.  I mean, that was where all the ammunition, I guess, for the whole island was stored.   It was a big place and it had an ammunition ship in there that they wanted unloaded.  So they grabbed up a big working party and I got in on that.  So we had to go over there in a boat.  They took us over there and it was alongside of a dock.  So when we got over there and saw what they had...and I mean, they had bombs, and torpedoes, mines and ...everything else stored just on top of the ground all around that area.  One bomb had been dropped right along on the dock and didn't do any damage at all.  But if it had it would have blown that whole island up.  But it didn't, they were fortunate.  Anyway, everybody was real skittish, so we went to general quarters about three times a day.  One of the times, about the first time they went, we...all the guys off the Vestal, we volunteered for mess duty.  They needed some extra mess cooks to make up for all that bunch that come to help them.  So we volunteered for that mess duty rather than to unload that ammunition.  We figured that would be easier, better and less dangerous.  Of course, nobody got hurt, but, you know, with new people unloading ammunition, I felt kind of unsafe.  I don't know if it made any difference, because if one of them had blown up anything, well, the whole island probably would've blowed up, the ship with it.  Anyway, we decided that and we took this mess duty.  And it wasn't too bad.  But they had general quarters there about noon one day and I never will forget this mess attendant.  The officers had Negro and Philippino mess attendants and those were the only Negroes and minorities that you had in the Navy then, was mess attendants for the officers.  Well this gong went off for general quarters and, boy, I'm telling you, they left that ship.  Those guys got away from that ship, running out through there, you know.  I thought that was funny, because the whole thing was ammunition.  It didn't make any difference where you were at.  So we just stayed aboard.  We decided there wasn't no use to run out there, it wasn't any worse than where we were at.  So we stayed and this Negro, he came down that gangway, it was a great big long gangway.  It was a big ship and a great big long gangway and, I mean, he was hitting them steps about three at a time going down that thing and he run out there and dived underneath them...he saw a big pile of black stuff stacked up.  He dived underneath them and it was a bunch of torpedoes. (chuckles)  I mean them things were about 8' long, you know, and he dived underneath them and turned around and all you could see was the whites of them eyes, looking out of that black stuff.  We just laughed our heads off at him because he did that.  Of course it was over in a few minutes and they said it was a false alarm, so they all came back.  He really looked sheepish after that, when he looked around and saw what he'd crawled under.  We asked him when he came back up if he thought he was safe underneath those torpedoes. (chuckles) He didn't know what to say. Anyway, I think it took us about 2 days to finish unloading that thing.  Then we went back to the ship.  By that time they had everything back, pretty well ship-shape.  The old laundry was going full blast and I went back to my job as a laundry man.  I don't even remember going ashore after that between then and when I left the ship about March 8.  I don't remember ever...we just stayed aboard and did laundry.  But they came around in January wanting volunteers to put other ships into commission.  So I volunteered along with a whole bunch of other guys.  Patterson and Acuna they volunteered.  Patterson was in there with me.  And a guy by the name of O'Neill.  I believe there was just two guys left in the laundry and they stayed and three of us (there was five in the laundry) went out whenever they finally made up the crew.  In the meantime, I'd written Momma and them that I was all right, but they didn't get no message.  There was a lot of that.   They just didn't go out, but I had written a letter letting them know I was o.k.  But they didn't know that.

Information provided by Gyrene Koonce Kennedy.