George A. Northup US Navy USS Ramapo |
Information provided by George Northup. |
George A. Northup By Mercedes Tira Andrei The lance of panic and fear, and the sting of animosity have all faded away. But the deafening bombs and deadly explosions that wrecked Pearl Harbor 59 years ago today are, to George Northup, still vivid. For Northup, 78, the carnage of the Japanese sneak attack seemed to have happened only yesterday. And the images of all hell breaking loose on the morning of December 7, 1941, are indelibly imprinted in his mind. Amazingly, he can see through the harsh pictures of Pearl Harbor's long-past dead and debris. For him, there is "another Pearl Harbor," a strong and beautiful shore. In the comfort of the Westminster at Lake Ridge apartment he shares with his wife, Margaret "Markie" Ruth, Northup dips into his memories and revisits the day that thrust the United States into World War II. The tall, distinguished Pearl Harbor survivor, a veteran of both World War II and Korea, cradled two written souvenirs of that carnage while he spoke with wonder about surviving the Japanese assault and the war years that followed in the Pacific and in Korea. His voice was edged with some concern, some yearning that "America never be caught off guard again" from any foreign attack. "But what's clear through the years after Pearl," he says, "is the blessing of having survived it. God honored my secret prayer to be saved. I have been blessed ever since. It's nonstop, as I am still here with my wife, who has made it all possible for me to succeed and accomplish something while I pursued my career: as a soldier and law enforcement officer. Northup, a native of Denver, prefers to speak more about Pearl Harbor's symbols and impact on his life than on the ravages of that day. He is spending Pearl Harbor Day away from Veterans' ceremonial remembrances, opting for a weekend with his wife, two sons, grandchildren and friends in his retirement community. But that doesn't mean forgetting the Pearl Harbor experience, where his career in defense began. Northup's memories hold many facets and he looks at them with a fresh eye, finding clues to his personal survival and touching the silver linings of that terrible day. He was fresh from US Navy boot camp and radio school in San Diego when he joined the USS Ramapo, a Navy oil tanker commissioned in 1919. "She was an old but very good ship," he said. "Like all naval tankers, it's named after rivers of the United States. Ramapo is a river in upstate New York." Northup was a 19-year-old radioman striker for the Ramapo after joining the Navy in January 1941. "We had one trip to Pearl Harbor in August 1941 and in November that year we were headed for it for oil. On December 1, as the Ramapo was still out of port, I remember the ship captain ordering complete darkness and the gun latch on the ready. He told us there were a lot of submarines in the area." On December 6, the Ramapo was to discharge oil at Pearl and return to the mainland. However, her orders were reversed on that day. It was to proceed instead to Manila via Australia for a two-year tour of duty. But the ship and its crew seemed appointed as witness to a historic moment. That moment was to become a watershed event for the United States to ultimately join the Allied Forces in World War II. "We were scheduled to leave for Manila on December 8. We were tied up, docked and sitting under a crane that was loading PT boats," he said. "I was on my bunk next to the radio room. At 7:55 in the morning, we heard a big, terrific explosion. I saw a man ran screaming, 'Japanese planes! Japanese planes!'" "I walked out and I saw a Japanese torpedo bomber right on the starboard side of our ship, on the battle wagons of the battleships. If I had a baseball then, I could have hit the plane, it was just so close. It has a big red insignia, the symbol of Imperial Japan. I saw the Japanese pilot heading his flight directly to the battleships. I could not see his face, but he was close enough." "I was shocked, I had a rush of disbelief," Northup said, his eyes never flickering as he spoke. "I rushed back inside to put on a pair of pants. At that instant, a bomb hit the magazine of the USS Arizona. I saw the ship blow sky high with (1,177) men killed in an instant." "About the same time, a torpedo hit the USS Oklahoma and it started capsizing. Men were scrambling on its side, not wanting to jump into the water." The Ramapo apparently took only shrapnel on its side. It remained largely unscathed during the attack. "Prior to the attack on Pearl, the Ramapo traveled to Asia, to Hong Kong and Japan. To show we were a neutral ship in the war between China and Japan, an American flag was painted on top of its radio shack and kept illuminated at night. It's a wonder that the Japanese did not hit the ship" despite its advertising in lights the Stars and Stripes on its radio shack. "It could be that the Japanese had their targets picked out at Pearl. Remember that we arrived only on December 6. We were not there earlier. Probably, they didn't know we were in the harbor, but it looks now that we were not on their target range," he said. "We were then carrying 80,000 barrels of oil; we had aviation gasoline in drums and ammunition in the holds. If a bomb hit us then it would have been goodbye in an instant." "The initial attack took only 15 minutes to damage all the battleships." At 10 a.m., two Japanese bombers were back. I saw bombs dropping from them on us, it seemed like the bombs were on us, but they fell instead on the Navy Yard," he continued. "It was a frightening ordeal, I could only pray to God to save us. Secretly, I prayed and told God that if he would save me, I would do anything for him." That prayer must have been answered immediately, for Ramapo, "a dirty, oily little ship" was left standing undamaged after the assault was over. Its crew, including Northup, was all spared. The tanker moved on to serve in the Aleutians. After the war, Northup was one of the last crewmen to leave the ship after it was decommissioned. He was allowed to keep the Ramapo's logbook that contains an account of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The memento reminds him that he was "a witness of an ordeal and a receiver of God's saving grace. He plans to pass on the logbook to his sons, both residents of Northern Virginia. He also keeps as a treasure a page from a Japanese Soldier's diary he recovered in the Aleutians. The entry has been translated into English and contains the soldier's fears of not surviving the war as it hit the islands. Memories of Pearl Harbor "no longer stir any animosity in me towards the Japanese," he said. "I am, however, concerned that as my generation is dying and dwindling, there will be no memories of Pearl one day. The river of remembrance will probably dry up." "Americans should remember Pearl Harbor and not forget how one nation tried to destroy us with a sneak attack," he said. "My hope is that America will never weaken its armed forces, that we will always be ready and united to defend our country and our principles. You have no idea how much a waste and a loss Pearl Harbor was. There probably will be Pearl Harbors in other forms in our nation's future. Probably, there could be a Pearl Harbor in cyberspace." Speaking as a war veteran in his twilight years, with a life full of "awesome battlefield memories," the message of remembering Pearl is "to remain at all times alert and vigilant, never to be caught off guard again," in defending the nation", he said. In 1990, Northup and his wife went to Pearl Harbor for a conference. That was the only time he has returned. He said he lost his cool at the Arizona memorial and shed tears as he traced the name of a friend who died on the ship. "I asked myself, what have I done to be alive today?" he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "It does amaze me and chokes me up that I was spared." After Pearl Harbor, he served on the USS Cumberland that was involved in testing the atomic bomb at the Bikini Atoll. He developed lymphoma after the war and sometimes wonders about its cause. "There are times I think I must have gotten lymphoma from the radiation of the experiments. But I am grateful to God to be alive today. I am richly blessed. I have no reason to complain," he said, showing a large framed photograph of the Arizona Memorial, which graces present-day Pearl Harbor. The photograph hangs on a wall in the Northups' bedroom, flanked by a framed print of the 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13, the Bible's "love chapter" and underneath, occasionally, a quilt stand holds a woven blanket depicting the Northup family tree-gifts. Northup said he survived Pearl Harbor, World War II and the Korean War to experience the "Blessings of marriage and family." He married his childhood sweetheart, Markie, in 1943 and together they raised their two sons in Springfield. Northup spent more than 30 years as a special agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He successfully handled cases of white slavery, drug trafficking and he learned to speak Romanian when he later moved on as a supervisor at the FBI, "Where I am proud to have served with Director J. Edgar Hoover." Still, "Markie has been the best experience of my life," he said, "The Ramapo got me through the war. Markie got me to this day." Pearl Harbor and the wars took him to Bora Bora, the Coral Sea, the South Pacific and, ultimately, Korea. From those travels, he said, he learned "the lesson to give my best shot, to be clean and respectable under any circumstance." "Marriage with Markie has taught me, on the other hand, that if a man fails in his marriage, it probably is the greatest failure of his life. I believe the secret of my surviving Pearl is Markie and our love. I survived Pearl for Markie's love, for our family and our life together." |
