Thomas F. Mahoney US Navy USS Curtiss |
One piece of memorabilia in Thomas Mahoney's Pearl Harbor collection is a testament to luck. It is an aerial photograph of Ford Island in the harbor, showing the Ford Island Naval Station and the ships positioned around the island. Mahoney's ship, the USS Curtiss, a seaplane tender, was anchored there, but at a distance from the other ships. He and his brother, Harold, were among the crew of 500. Crowding its decks were hundreds of drums of flammable fuel. "We were docked very far away for safety because we were loaded with 100,000 gallons of aviation fuel, bombs, shells and torpedoes for delivery to Wake and Midway islands," Mahoney recalled. The other ships were mostly seaplanes, oil tankers and battleships. They were anchored on the other side of the island. That's the side that took most of the fatal hits from the Japanese bombers. The Curtiss took hits but remained afloat. Most of its crew survived, said Mahoney. But they lived through hell. "Just before 8 a.m., our ship began to roll as the bombs began to fall," the former sailor recounts in a memoir he has written for appearances in schools. "We could not believe our eyes. From the porthole, I could see the Japs bombing everything in sight. All hell was breaking loose, everything happening at once. Everything was on fire boats, ships and men." He remembers the day as a maelstrom of fire, flame, smoke, bobms, anoise, blood and the clang, clang of general quarters being sounded. "My shins are all broken up from general quarters because you have to go through the bulkheads hundreds of times, fast, and you get tired and start banging into them," he said. He saw the battleship Utah take it's first hits. "I saw it roll over," he said. "That was one of the first things to go. I happened to be looking outwe could hear the men callingthey didn't have a chance," recalled Mahoney, a member of the Central Jersey chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. The Curtiss suffered too. A 1,300-pound bomb hit the ship, drove four decks down and then exploded. Mahoney has a piece of shrapnel from the bomb. The strafing was intense. The ship was at a 30-degree list. Then cam the enemy submarine. An illustration in Mahoney's memento collections shows the two-man, 80-foot Japanese sub that attacked his ship. "At the same time that it fired its torpedo, we fired the the #3 five-inch gun and hit it in the conning tower," Mahoney writes in his memoir. The destroyer Monahan then rammed the sub and sank it. "By this time, the ship is an inferno. All four decks are burning. Men were trapped in different places. Some were rescued. Some couldn't be". The crew fought fires for nine hours. "We were almost ready to abandon shipsomehow the sailors got the ship upright and we started to put out the fires." And then came the calm, a quiet moment on deck and another big surprise. "I leaned against the rail to look out at the harbor just as the sun was setting What a sight! A huge red ball!" he recalled. "I said a prayer of thanks." Then he asked the fellow next to him about his brother. "Hell, who are you?" came the answer. "I'm Tom Mahoney." "I'm your brother Harold." Oil, grease and soot had obscured their faces, said Mahoney. "We embraced and cried like the kids we were." Mahoney went on to serve on the destroyer O'Bannon (DD450) in the Pacific, winning 17 battle stars and serving in such battles as Guadalcanal, Midway, Corregidor, Borneo, the Phillippines and Tokyo Bay. Against orders, he kept a diary for his remaining war years, scribbling brief entries every few days in a tiny pad and hiding the pads in his shoes. The entry for December 7, 1944, takes note of the anniversary. "Three years since we were bombed at Pearl Harbor. Boy are we cutting them down to size. This is the only thing that keeps me going. War is HELL!" It is a Dante-esque freeze frame, one of the many Navy veterans, Thomas Mahoney, brought home with him from Pearl Harbor, one that remains sharp in his memory. At a below-deck gun mount, men are incinerated as they stand gripping the gun, burned up by the heat of the bomb that hits the ship, the USS Curtiss. The 19-year old sailor came upon the men, his shipmates, during the chaotic hours after the December 7, 1941 surprise attack. "They were holding their hands like this," he said, holding his arms open in a waltz partner's embrace. "When you touched them, their flesh just disintegrated." Mahoney knew every one. "They were the guys I went to the movies with the night before, the guys I had breakfast with," he recalled somberly. It was to honor those men and all who served at Pearl Harbor that Mahoney undertook a four-year statewide crusade. The effort culminated in the recent dedication of the westbound spur of the New Jersey Turnpike at Exit 6 as the Pearl Harbor Memorial Extension. Some 250 veterans, dignitaries and state officials attended the ceremony, including State Senator Louis Bassano and Assemblyman Louis Azzlino, key figures in the crusade's success, according to Mahoney, and Lee Goldfarb, former president of the New Jersey and national Pearl Harbor Survivors' Associations. The Whitman administration was represented by John Whitman, the governor's husband, and officials from the Turnpike Authority and the Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs. A commemorative plaque was installed at the Stockton rest area between Exits 7 and 7A,k where the ceremony was held. The four-year crusade began after Mahoney saw in a survivors' newsletter reports of a similar campaign in Florida. His idea was a big one; to rename the entire Turnpike. Season after season, he made the rounds of veterans' clubs and gathered signatures on petitions for state legislators, including those of all Pearl Harbor survivors in the state. In Trenton, Bassano helped him out by drawing up a bill. "The bill never came to a floor vote because they said it would cost too much money to change the signs on the Turnpike," said Mahoney, a retired stagehand and Kean College electrician. "Then it petered out completely, but I kept bothering Senator Bassano." Months of silence passed. The idea seemed dead. Then, triumph. "All of a sudden I get a phone call six months ago from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority," he smiled. "They asked if it would be okay to name a part of the Turnpike from Exit 6 to the Pennsylvania boarder. I said we would be thankful for anything to honor the people who were at Pearl Harbor, living and dead." The spur has two signs, so the compromise means the addition of just four signs: two on the Turnpike, northbound and southbound just before Exit 6, and two on the spur itself, said Mahoney. "I'm telling you I'm speechless and in a fog because nothing so great ever happened to any of us," the Navy veteran said just after the ceremony. "After all the meetings, and this and that, it's like someone giving you a million dollars and a new life. "These men," he added, "will always be remembered." |
Information provided by Thomas & Claire Mahoney. |
