Boyd Williamson US Navy USS San Francisco

Boyd Williamson was only 17 when he ran away from home to join the US Navy.  On the last day of his junior year of high school he just never went home, and on Friday the 13th, he enlisted. Now 77 and thinking back, Williamson said he can't believe he did that to his parents, but he didn't want to grow up to be a farmer in Utah. He thought joining the Navy seemed like the right thing to do, at the time.  Making $21 a month or 70 cents a day was more than he could make being a farmer. Williamson remembers the planes flying low over Ford Island in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.  His ship, the USS San Francisco, was in port for repairs and more or less sitting dead in the water when the attack by the Japanese Imperial Navy began. He was up early that day, on the fantail of the ship watching the color guards about to hoist the flags at 8 am. The flags were ready to be run up the flagpole, Williamson said, when all hell broke loose. Japanese planes came in low and started shooting up the liberty boats in the harbor with machine guns.  They just strafed the boats in the water.  "I thought it was another drill, but when I saw and heard the shooting, and the red meatball on the side of the planes, I got scared," Williamson said.  "My knees didn't want to hold me up.  They went so soft.  I didn't know if I was going to make it.  When I saw flames coming from battleship row, I knew this wasn't a drill.  We could see the expressions on the faces of the Japanese flying the planes, they were so low." When he saw a Japanese plane go down by a hospital, he was curious about the plane and went over to check it out.  He had time for barely a glance before being ordered into a motor launch to retrieve bodies floating in the bay. "The bay, by this time was covered in oil," Williamson said.  "We could see lumps in the water that were bodies floating.  We used boat hooks to retrieve the bodies of our fellow shipmates.  We did this until our boat was full of bodies, then off to Ford Island to empty the boat.  Then back to get more bodies. "Sometimes the boat would hit bodies that didn't rise high enough on the surface of the water.  I had work to do, but I got sick because of all the dead bodies around us.  We did this even into the night until we couldn't see any more.  Then back to our ship and was assigned other duties to get the ship ready for sea." After spending four years in the Navy, Williamson still wanted to be a pilot, so he joined the US Air Force as an aviation cadet. First, he fought in the Korean conflict, then later in Vietnam, where he earned the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. In Vietnam, in 1968-69, he flew 344 combat missions.  His plane was an attack gunner AC47 ship with three mini-guns, firing 6,000 rounds a minute.  He retired as a lieutenant colonel. When he was finished with his career as a fighter pilot, he returned to Coos Bay to teach at Marshfield as an aviation and space science instructor for 10 years.  He didn't have to return to school to get his GED because administrators let his life experience be his education.  He now holds a masters degree in public administration of science. In 2000, Williamson was asked to take a ride on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, coming back from the Persian Gulf to its homeport of San Diego. He met the ship in Pearl Harbor and was treated like royalty.  He told them of the battle he had seen in Pearl Harbor. This year, he was reunited with one of his shipmates from the San Francisco who also lives in Coos Bay.  Manfred Olson served the same time as Williamson and although neither of them knew it, they even shared the same sleeping quarters on the ship.  The men were re-introduced recently by a mutual friend.

Information provided by Boyd Williamson