Jerome Zobel US Navy USS Nevada |
Information provided by Richard G. Hackett, Survivor. |
Born in San Francisco, Jerome Zobel graduated form McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal in 1933, then did a residency in colon and rectal surgery in San Francisco. He volunteered for the Naval Reserves in 1939 and for active duty in October 1940, when he was immediately assigned to San Diego Naval Hospital. In February 1941, he was ordered to the USS Nevada as a Junior Medical Officer. It was a quiet Sunday morning, I was in my cabin below decks when I woke up after a crash that nearly knocked me out of my bunk. I knew something terrible had happened, because one of the steel walls of my room was bent in. At first I thought an ammunition barge moored alongside the ship had exploded. In fact, the Nevada had just taken its first hit. A Japanese torpedo had found its mark on the port bow just forward of and below my cabin. I didn't know what to do, and then I realized that because we had had a lot of drills, and then there wasn't anything to do but listen to the "talker" someone on the bridge telling us by telephone what was going on. He told us about the Arizona exploding and burning. Everything happened so fast; within 30 minutes, the Oklahoma overturned, the West Virginia sank, and the Arizona was destroyed. All of the fleet's battleships were damaged. The Nevada was the only battleship able to move under its own power. On fire and with a gaping hole in the port base, the Nevada edged out of its berth and into the channel, past her burning sister ships, and headed for the open sea. Witnesses later said our sortie was the most thrilling sight they had ever seen, for the Japanese pilots, were a target not to be missed. That's when it really happened. As we headed for the harbor entrance, the Japanese all concentrated on us. From the bridge we heard, "Hit the deck! It's dive bombers!" We hit the deck and just waited for it to happen. We got a bomb hit soon after we got there, just forward of my battle station. It blew out the ventilating system, and smoke, filled the compartment. There were a lot of other people in there, too the repair party was there and when one man fell unconscious, the senior officer notified the bridge that we wouldn't be able to stay there much longer; we had gas masks, but they weren't much help. The bridge told us to secure the compartment. They cracked open the hatch of the armored deck and we got out, but there wasn't any light. One of the repair parties had a flashlight, so we had to hang onto the man in front of us until we could get on the deck. (The armored deck was two decks below the main deck. Hoping to sink us and block the harbor entrance, all the bombers came at us. At least five direct hits and countless near misses shrouded the ship with huge columns of water and clouds of smoke and flame. The forward part of the ship was burning badly. When it looked like the Japanese might sink us, the harbor tower ordered us out of the channel. We were taking on water, so we beached near the naval hospital. When we started drifting, two tugs moved us near the cane fields on the opposite side of the channel. When I reached the man deck around 10:00 a.m., it wasn't a very happy scene. It seemed the entire harbor was on fire. One of the ships closest to us was the destroyer Shaw. The bomb that hit the Shaw was meant for us. It blew up her magazine, and she was burning furiously. When I came out, the attack had just ended. But we thought they'd be back. Everyone just stood around there wasn't anything else to do. I got a first aid kit and made the rounds. There were a lot of burns, and a lot of casualties from strafing and shrapnel. We were fortunate, because we were right across the harbor from the naval hospital, and the hospital ship Solace was still in the harbor she was assigned to the fleet. Some boats came out to us, so we put the badly wounded sailors on stretches and lowered them over the side. The Nevada was going down at that time, so it wasn't very far down to the boats. After the wounded were sent off ship, the senior medical officer organized parties to pick up the dead. We had 52 dead and between 100 and 150 wounded. For the beating we took, we came off pretty lucky. In the attack on Pearl Harbor and Oahu's airfields, 2,403 Americans were killed, 2,008 of them Navy men, eighteen ships were sunk or seriously damaged and 349 planes were damaged or destroyed. Of the 18 damaged ships, all but three were repaired and saw action by the end of the war. I was with the Nevada until December 1942, then served Stateside until my active duty ended in late 1945. During that tour I married Louise Purwin, then a UPI journalist, now a travel writer. We have four children and seven grandchildren. I retired as a captain from the Naval Reserves in 1965 and from a private practice in colon and rectal surgery in Palo Alto in 1977. And the Nevada? She was refloated and repaired, and saw action off Alaska, North Africa, Normandy, and Iwo Jima, where she survived a direct hit from a kamikaze. After the war, she was a target ship for atomic testing at Bikini but they couldn't sink her. Too radioactive for further service, the Navy used here for target practice off Hawaii and the Nevada still wouldn't sink. I hear they fired all kinds of shells at her, planes flew over and bombed her, and finally they got her with torpedoes. It's too bad, she was a wonderful ship. |
