Harry P. Sanderson US Navy USS Solace

The USS Arizona burned so fiercely after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, that Rescuers couldn't walk on the molten and twisted decks for more than a week. The Arizona was the greatest casualty of the attack, being sunk, and losing more than 1,100 men.  US Navy Coxswain Harry Sanderson was working on the hospital ship USS Solace in the harbor and he had one of the grimmest tasks of all the survivors  recover the wounded and find the dead.  A coxswain is a sailor in charge of a ship's boat, usually acting as its helmsman. "We went out in little whale boats into the harbor to get all the guys that were in the water."  But first, I had to go on a 35-foot boat to shore to get our captain, who had been in Honolulu when the planes started coming in.  There was a lot of strafing.  The whole day was exhausting, working out of the small boats.  All I remember was getting back to the Solace that night and finally getting something to eat." When the Solace first moved out, it went to the USS Whitney.  "There were a lot of guys who'd jumped into the water, so we kept pulling them out and taking them back to the ship.  Then we were moored next to the Arizona, but it was impossible to board her because of the fires and explosions.  So they moved us to make us safer while we waited.  Yeah, a lot safer.  We tied up right next to the ammunition dump." The recovery would go on for weeks.  But the Navy had given all the sailors a post card to send home if they survived.  Sanderson mailed his immediately to his wife, Pat, whom he had married on September 5, 1941, just one day before shipping out to Pearl. Mrs. Sanderson said she was watching a football game with her in-laws on Sunday, December 7, 1941, when the news bulletin came on about the attack. "I knew Harry was in Pearl Harbor, but I didn't get his card for six weeks.  It was the middle of January before we knew he was okay.  The Navy must've sent that card by Pony Express." Sanderson recently had a stroke and speaks very slowly about what happened at Pearl Harbor.  It's something he doesn't like to talk about.  But his face turns fiery red, when he does recount what he went through.  His wife helped him retell much of the story. "Harry hasn't told a lot of people about this.  And it was many years before he even told me.  But I'm so proud of him and those other men, that I think people, especially young people today, should know what they went through," says Mrs. Sanderson. When Sanderson first went out in the whale boats, they were strafed by Japanese planes flying so low that sailors could see the smile on the pilots' faces.  Miraculously, during a direct attack from the front to the back of the whale boat, the bullets sprayed along both sides of the little boat. "The guns on the wings of the plane were just wide apart enough that Harry's whale boat went right through the middle without being touched," Mrs. Sanderson said.  "He told me he said a lot of prayers that day." When the sailors finally were able to board the Arizona, sometimes all they found were dog tags.  "The wind had already blown the ashes from the bodies away," Mrs. Sanderson said. "And for 10 days, they had to continue searching the harbor, waiting for the dead bodies to float to the surface so they could recover them.  You can see why Harry doesn't like to talk about it."

Information provided by Harry Sanderson