Henry L. West US Navy USS Utah

I was as a seaman second class, 2nd division and Coxswain of a fifty foot motor launch aboard the USS UTAH. This former battleship was now used as a mobile target and an Antiaircraft Gunnery school. All of our guns were covered with steel dog houses for protection against four pound bombs to 100 pound water bombs. We arrived in Pearl Harbor December fifth, Friday afternoon and tied up at Fox Eleven Key, which was the aircraft carrier, the USS ENTERPRISE tie up key. Everything was normal Friday and Saturday. Sunday morning I got up at six o'clock and made my two liberty runs and was off duty at seven thirty A.M. and went below and got changed to go ashore. I had just sat down to eat my breakfast when we heard an explosion in what sounded like the forward part of the ship and we thought it was a stack of timber that had fallen over topside as we had it stacked about eight high, as we were going to take it off the ship on Monday morning. Then there was another explosion right below us and we still did not know what was wrong.

Information provided by Henry L. West

Then someone said the Japanese were attacking and we thought he was crazy, but they sounded the "bombing stations" alarm, which was two decks below. We had just gotten down there and they sounded abandon ship. When we started topside, the ship already had a twenty degree port list and there on the ladder up was a Chief Petty Officer frozen with fear and you could not break his hands loose from the handrail. Another Chief behind him gave him one hell of a kick in the rear and he went up like a shot. When I reached topside I could see the hell that had broken loose. I ran toward the fantail and my division Boatswain Mate stopped me and told me to get my boat and I told him to go to h---, if he wanted it he could get it himself and I kept going, as the bow of my boat was going under water at that point. I went around number five turret and started for the side of the ship and I was lucky that I had looked forward because a Jap plane was machine gunning the deck and I jumped back under number five turret which saved my life. Then I ran to the handrail, grabbed it and jumped down to the blister [on the starboard side of the ship] and into the water. I was going swimming that day anyway, but this was to soon. I swam to Ford Island; when I got there I turned around and looked back at the ship. It had rolled ninety degrees over and standing on the keys that are used to tie the ship to forward and forward and aft. They are about twenty feet square and a few feet out of the water, about fifty some men were standing on them. The Japs were shooting at them and killing a lot of them. Coming around the fantail of the ship was the officers motorboat going full astern and it sank right there as it had it's bow was blown off when the torpedo hit and the boat crew had all their clothes on it and were they mad when it sank. Down in the fireroom the Chief Watertender [Peter Tomich] ordered everybody out and he secured it alone and he lost his life doing it. We had one man cut out of the bottom during the attack. Some men swam across the bay to Pearl City; how they did this I do not know. After we got on Ford Island we were told get dry clothes at the Bachelor officers Quarters. The officer in charge told us to get any clothes we could find. One sailor I knew well got a complete officers uniform on and stayed in it all day. It was a Navy fliers uniform - a Lieutenant's at that. He got away with it too, disposing of it that night as he could have been put behind bars for wearing it and he knew that. Tied up forward of us was the Cruisers, the USS RALEIGH, and the USS DETROIT. The Raleigh was hit amidships by a torpedo and sank in the upright position as they broke out cables for and aft and held it from rolling over. Later it was repaired and put back into service. Aboard the USS DETROIT was Commander Destroyer Battle Force Four. This was the ship I went aboard three days later and spent the next fours years on her. She was not hurt that day except for a few bullet holes. She got underway that day by herself without the help of a tugboat, went out in the channel, turned around and came back, tied up single lines for and aft and waited for orders. She got her orders and left with her squadrons of destroyers. They were the only fighting ships that got out-that day. The USS NEVADA tried to get out the channel and she got hit and they backed her up on the beach before she sank so she would not block the channel. An Oil Tanker, the USS Neosho (AO23), was at Ford Island with a full load of aviation fuel and got right out in the middle of the raid and came back after midnight unloaded and left again. It was the first oil tanker to be sank in WW2 in the south pacific. It was a good ship to serve on. I had spent three weeks on her in July 1941. There were three two-men subs in the harbor somewhere. They started looking for them. One got caught in the sub nets and one was rammed by a destroyer as it was going out the channel and it took them two days to get the other one. The one that was caught in the sub nets was the one that was on the War Bond Drive all over the UNITED STATES. It is hard to remember everything that went on that day as it went by so fast; it was night before we knew it. The first night we spent aboard the USS ARGONNE, the Base Force Flagship. That evening we enjoyed the first meal that we had that day. About nine that night I was on the main deck lying on a bench half asleep when I heard someone scream. I sat up and looked around and saw what happened. One man was shot through the chest and the same shot went through another man's elbow. We could not figure out where the shot came from, so we started looking for a hole in the side of the ship and there it was right behind my head. If I had been sitting up I would have been dead now. That-was twice that day. The shot came from the USS California's machine guns on top of the main mast. They had shot down one of our own planes and followed it right down to the water. At this same time a man was killed topside and one on the dock. The one on the dock was in the boat crew of a fifty foot motor launch tied up at the dock. His crew members took him to sickbay and did not come back to their boat. So the Officer of the deck started passing the word for them and no one showed up so they passed the word for boat crews that were aboard to lay down to the quarter deck. I found my boat crew and we decided to see what they wanted. We did like darn fools. They wanted this boat taken over to the USS SALT LAKE CITY and unload it and tow another forty footer back. We stuck out our necks and said we would. They did not tell us what it had in it. We just about took off ourselves as it was loaded with five inch ammunition and the Marines on the ends of the docks were trigger happy and you had to holler your lungs out. Well, we made it over there and were towing the other boat back and coming back around the end of ten ten dock here came a big harbor tug, it was so dark you could not see very far ahead of you. We were hollering as loud as we could and the tugs engines were making so much noise that they did not hear us until it was darn near too late. I did not have the best control over the two boats so I, could not get out of the way. When they saw us they backed down full astern like I was doing and we did not have two inches to spare as we passed. After that we got the boats back to the dock and we took off. We did not feel bad as it was three in the morning and we had little sleep. These are some of the things I saw happen on December Seventh.