Merion Myers US Navy USS West Virginia |
Merion Myers' tour aboard the battleship USS West Virginia ended in what seemed like an instant. The fire and rescue alarm blared while Myers was below decks, getting dressed for a day of liberty. His fire-and-rescue duty station was on the bow of the 624-foot long West Virginia. "As I got up there, I could see a Japanese bomber just cruising along maybe 50 feet above the mast of the California in front of us," he remembers. "We knew right away this was not just a fire and rescue." General quarters sounded, and Myers raced below to the second deck, the mess deck. He and his shipmates began closing hatches to the third deck as quickly as they could, bu they were unable to finish when the first of several torpedoes slammed into the hull. A huge wave of water and heavy bunker oil came roaring up through the open hatches, he said. "It knocked the lights out and knocked everybody down," he said. "When I picked myself up, I was in the washroom. I could feel the tile deck. My shoes and socks were gone. I don't know what happened to them." Myers wasn't seriously injured, but he was covered with the thick oil. His leg was splattered with particles, possibly pieces of shattered dishes from the nearby mess area. As he made his way toward the ladder topside, the call came to abandon ship. Myers made his way up to the main deck, and then to the bow. The ship was on fire and sinking. "The stern of the ship, where the airplanes were, was burning," he said. "You could see people up on the main mast and there was no way for them to get down there was fire below them. You knew they were gone." Soon, the bow was so low the men could walk off the deck into a waiting launch. Myers' turn came and he stepped into the launch with 35 or 40 other sailors. By this time the attack had subsided. Myers still was covered with oil, and the oil on the water's surface was burning. The boat made its way toward shore, but then the engine died. There was nothing they could do but drift. Finally they pulled alongside the capsized USS Oklahoma. Myers and the other men crawled onto the hull and made their way to another launch, where they would be taken to the pier. They knew there were men trapped in the ship beneath them; it would take days for workers to free them. That was the last Myers ever saw of the USS West Virginia or its crew. The ship sank to the bottom of the harbor, and by the time salvage was complete, the bodies of 70 sailors were found. Myers was sent to a field hospital where the oil was removed from his body. The next afternoon, he was given clothes and sent to Ford Island, where he spent the next five days helping guard the air strip Soon, he was transferred to the USS Tennessee, which was damaged in the attack but returned to sea by December 20. "All I had was just the clothes on my back and one blanket, and that was given to me," he said. "I didn't have anything." He remembers the misery of the battleship's journey to the Aleutian Islands, fighting the fogs and legendary foul weather. "We got caught in a big storm up there that tore all our planes up, the waves were so high," he said. The Pearl Harbor attack never made him think about leaving the Navy, but the thought did cross his mind after that Alaskan trip. "I liked to froze to death," he said. "I thought, boy, if I ever get my two feet on ground they'll never see me again. But after we got back I got over that." Myers next was transferred to the Atlantic Fleet, to a torpedo squadron gearing up to participate in the invasion of North Africa. He served on the USS Santee, which provided air support for the invasion. Later, the Santee went on anti-submarine patrol near South America, and spent the remainder of the war escorting convoys across the Atlantic. "We'd pick them up off Bermuda, take them to North Africa, then we'd swing up to England, then we'd bring a convoy back and do it again," he said. The Santee captured one German submarine, earning a presidential unit citation. |
Information provided by Merion Myers. |
