Jim Moon US Navy USS St. Louis |
Information provided by Jim Moon. |
The USS St. Louis was in the naval shipyard at Pearl Harbor being out-fitted with a new radar when the Japanese attacked. We were outboard of the USS Honolulu which was alongside the dock. When the GQ alarm sounded I was asleep in my bunk and I jumped out of it and ran all the way to my battle station in my shorts thinking it was a drill. When I got to my battle station which was in the lower handling room of number 3 and 4 AA (anti aircraft) mounts, there was no one there and there was no electricity to run the hoists. Later people began to show up and said we were at war with the Japanese. Being young and naive, I did not know we were even close to being at war with anyone. An enemy aircraft raked the ship with machine gun bullets and a bomb dropped through the dock against which the Honolulu was nestled. The concussion was so tremendous it not only damaged the Honolulu but shook the St. Louis to the extent that we were certain she had sustained a direct hit. About an hour after the shooting started our electricity came on and we began sending ammo to the 5" guns. We learned later that the crew had downed 3 enemy aircraft. The Captain ordered the ship to get underway and we backed out into the harbor and went up the channel at 25 knots. On the way out of the harbor the ship fired on a two man sub, sinking same, only after the sub had fired two torpedoes at us which were detonated on the reefs because they were set too low. We were the only large ship to get out of the harbor during the battle. After a three day search for the enemy we returned to Pearl Harbor. The harbor water was black with oil and covered with debris. At Aiea Landing caskets of deceased personnel were piled on high as far as you could see. We lost over 2000 men that day and one thousand are still entombed in the USS Arizona. A friend I went to school with, Claude Holland, is one of those men. |
