Just more than 30 years old, the USS Utah (AG-16) had served the Navy well in two roles: as a battleship, working as a convoy escort off the British Isles during World War I; and as a target and training ship that could be piloted by remote control. Among her recent duties, she served as a target ship for naval aviators and as an antiaircraft gunnery training ship. On the morning of 7 December 1941 she was moored on the west side of Ford Island at berth F-11, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
In addition to the strategically important Battleship Row on the east side of Ford Island, the Japanese thought two other areas were important enough to warrant attention. These were the long 1010 dock at the Navy Yard and the fixed moorings on the western side of Ford Island, both of which might hold battleships or aircraft carriers. This morning, the seaplane tender Tangier (AV-8), the Utah, and the light cruisers Raleigh (CL-7) and Detroit (CL-8) occupied the west side of the island. Because she was operating as a target ship, all of the Utah's antiaircraft guns were covered with steel housing, and her machine guns were dismantled and stowed below decks. Huge 6-by-12-inch wooden timbers lined the decks to protect the ship during bombing practice. Japanese pilots were ordered specifically not to waste torpedoes on the old ship, but the inexperienced pilots may have confused her with the carrier Enterprise (CV-6), which was supposed to have been occupying that berth.
At 0801, an aerial torpedo slammed into the Utah's port side as the crew raised the flag on the fantail. Minutes later, a second torpedo hit the same area. Water began to fill the ship rapidly, and she listed 15°. When the senior officer on board, Lieutenant Commander S. S. Isquith, realized that the Utah was sinking, he ordered the crew to the starboard to escape the danger of loose timbers pinning men down or striking them. By 0805 the list had increased to 40°. In less than five minutes after the first torpedo, she was lost. Shouts of "abandon ship over the starboard side" wafted over the din. As men scrambled for safety, the increased list caused the timbers to loosen and slide into the water, crushing men below. At about 0812 the Utah capsized after her mooring lines snapped.
A total of 30 officers and 431 men were reported to have survived the loss of the ship. At best estimates, 6 officers and 52 enlisted men were lost, many trapped on board, others cut down by strafing aircraft.
Survivors' Stories
Heroism can take many forms. On this day, survival was certainly one of them. Most of these sailors were just kids, some as young as 17, boys who became men in just 11 minutes. Following are the accounts of a few of them.
Seaman Second Class Jim Oberto—He was one of the newest members of the Utah's crew, having been on board ship only about eight months:
December 7th 1941 was to have been a day of liberty ashore for me. As I chomped into a roll and took a swig of coffee, [shipmate] Lester Hutnick sat down on the edge of the bunk and said, 'Man oh man, Jimmie, this is gonna be some day, some show.' At precisely 0755 the bugler sounded the call to colors. Both of us heard him start the call; no one on board ship, to my knowledge, ever heard him finish.
Suddenly, the ship rose a bit out of the water and slammed back onto the surface with a gut-wrenching shudder. There were about 25 guys in our sleeping compartment [on the third deck], almost all getting ready to start the day. In one corner of the compartment was a poker table with about seven sailors sitting around it playing cards. One of the guys, upset over the money, chips, and cards having been knocked off the table angrily retorted, 'Jesus Christ, what now? Don't tell me the Air Force is practicing torpedo and dive bombing attacks on Sunday morning, for Christ's sake.' Another card player said, 'Probably the God damned Japs are bombing us!'
Seconds later, a postal clerk came stumbling down the compartment ladder, disheveled, bloody, and wild eyed, shouting, 'Believe it or not, the God damned Japs are bombing us!' The deck of our sleeping compartment had split open, and thick black oil had begun oozing up through the crack. It wasn't long before all of us became aware the deck was no longer level. The original loud explosion was followed almost immediately by several other detonations of varying strengths and loudness. An alarming amount of seawater came cascading into the hatch opening just above our heads.
Radioman Third Class Bill Hughes—I had been aboard the Utah for more than a year. We were located two decks below the main deck, and one deck above the engine room.
On that lazy Sunday morning, most off-duty radiomen were asleep on our dry comfortable cots in the bunk room. The explosion almost threw us out of our bunks. We must have been looking at each other in sheer amazement. One sailor said we had been rammed.
Within 20 or so seconds, a second jarring explosion again rocked the ship from the port side, and within a minute the Utah was taking on a pronounced list to port. It was obvious to all of us that we needed to reach topside immediately.
Radioman Third Class Clarence Durham—A compartment adjacent to the radio shack was the sleeping quarters for the radiomen. Airshafts, one portside and another starboard, allowed main ventilation down into the engine room, and iron steps were structured up through the shafts to allow personnel to gain access from the engine room to upper decks.
My brother [Jack Durham] was on duty the morning of December 7th 1941, and I was asleep on my cot in the radio sleeping compartment. The first torpedo hit knocked me out of bed. From that instant on it was a frantic struggle for survival for the whole crew.
Fireman Second Class Jack Vaessen—Like Oberto, Vaesson was relatively new to the Utah. He was assigned the duty of electrician's mate striker and had watch beginning at 0800 in the switchboard room, which controlled the ship's electrical system.
The blisters [on the side of the ship] were wide open, having just been painted, and when the first torpedo hit, they filled fast. I'm putting batteries in the flashlight, and all of a sudden there's this thunk in the blister, and water is coming in. Just before I had gone down the hatch, I noticed a ship go by. I believe it was the Arizona, but I couldn't swear to it. So I said: 'Gee, they must have rammed us.'
Then pretty soon I felt another thud, and more water started pouring in. We had emergency-lighting acid batteries, and the water started shorting everything out. Then the batteries began exploding. The power started dimming. I knew to keep the lights on, so I pulled the vent.
Escape
Jim Oberto—We started to climb in single file to the second deck. Compounding our situation were the tons of water pouring in on us from the open portholes on the portside. In the peacetime Navy, ships leave the portholes open for ventilation purposes while in port. It was clear that the ship was going underwater. Those of us on the deck itself were standing in water nearly to our knees.
The line came to a stop at the hatch opening. A chief watertender was blocking the exit, explaining that Japanese fighter planes were strafing our main deck, and it was better for us below decks. He didn't realize that we were going to drown if we didn't get up on deck quickly. The sailor at the head of the line drew his knife, and the chief relented.
When we stepped out on the main deck, we were met by a scene right out of Dante's Inferno. Ships and buildings were exploding and burning as far as I could see.
Bullets hitting the timbers sent splinters of wood flying in all directions. The sight of those timbers beginning to shift and move struck terror in me. The more the deck tilted, the more dangerous these huge pieces of wood became. My decision was to take the more difficult route and climb toward the starboard side.
I discovered that not only were the timbers moving, they were covered with heavy black oil. I began to slip and slide and found it terribly difficult to maintain my grip in this black, gummy ooze. The angle had to be at least 60°, getting close to vertical. I finally reached out and grabbed the starboard lifelines.
All those heads bobbing just below me were the guys who had opted to leave the ship by simply walking down the sloping deck and stepping into the water. There were a lot killed as timbers slid, finally, into the sea right on top of them.
I can distinctly remember seeing a man dive from the upper reaches of our main mast, high above the bridge. He had aimed to enter the water between the Utah and the quay. But he misjudged the angle of the ship, and it was horrifying to see him come crashing to an end as he slammed into the steel hull, bounced high into the air, twisting and turning, and finally hit the water with an appalling splash.
Oberto had a secret he had hidden from the Navy: although he was fortunate to have found a life jacket, he could not swim. His inner voice told him, "You're going to die, yah jerk!"
I lost my footing, landed on my rear, and went slipping and sliding down the rough, barnacle-encrusted steel hull, ripping the bottom out of my shorts and tearing skin off my rear in the process. I was grasping at anything to slow this downward slide. But there was nothing to grab and I shot off the hull and into the water.
Bill Hughes—Our departure from the sleeping quarters was orderly but swift. Up two ladders and we found ourselves huddling under the starboard air castle. By this time, Jap aircraft were making strafing runs on the hapless sailors exposed to their fire. All our guns had been covered for bombing practice the week before, we could not fire back, and the giant ship was listing rapidly to port. It has been stated that an order to abandon ship was given. I failed to hear the command above the din of battle—'slaughter' seems more appropriate now. It became a matter of every man for himself. Personally, I felt an urgent need to distance myself from the ship.
Clarence Durham—I tried to escape first through the airshaft off the radio room, but it was impossible. The ship had already listed so far that a battle bar had broken loose from an unsecured lock and blocked the airshaft above me. The one at the level of the radio room had also fallen, trapping sailors below. I will never forget the faces of those men trapped in the engine room. I knew there was no way I could lift those steel grates, and I also knew at that point that my chances were very slim of getting out myself. The ship continued to roll, and I ran back through the radio room, then through the sleeping quarters to the other airshaft. Fortunately, the direction of the roll must have kept the battle bars in this shaft from closing. By the time I reached the air castle, I was walking on the bulkheads.
I crawled across the starboard railing and worked my way around to the bottom of the ship as she turned completely over. I was standing on the keel section when Jap planes started strafing the Tangier, moored aft of the Utah, and some of the slugs were flying on either side of me, so I decided to abandon ship. I believe I was the next-to-last man alive to leave the ship. Another sailor [Vaessen] was cut out and rescued from the double bottom of the ship later that day.
Jack Vaessen—I pulled fans and all the power and headed to the hatch as the ship was turning over. Batteries began exploding. I was hit with deck plates and fire extinguishers, and I was hanging onto anything I could grab. I was hit in many places but not by sharp edges. I was just lucky God was with me. The ship rolled over, and I crawl over the amplidynes and go up to the bottom.
The amplidyne motor room was for the guns, the control to keep them in phase. I didn't see anyone. So I went to the bottom and picked up the wrench for the hatch to the bilges. There are four big brass bolts and a brass cover over the bilge. I opened it up, and the door swings open. It's where they keep the spare asbestos. Asbestos flew like a snow storm as I crawled up to the bottom. I could look down below, and I could see the water bubbling up pretty fast. Every once in a while, something on the superstructure, which was holding us up, would snap.
I said: 'Pull yourself together. I'm gonna go up to the bilge.' My light—it would be one of those with a switch that's not the greatest—would go on and off at times. I crawled along, and every time I looked down at the water, I got more scared.
With the wrench I hit the bottom of the ship. I said: 'It sounds to me like it's out of water,' but I wasn't sure. So I hit it again and again, and I guess I kept it up for quite a while. I just banged and banged, and nothing happened for quite a while. All of a sudden I heard rapping on the outside and voices, but I couldn't understand what they said. So I crawled along and pounded away. I heard a tap back and voices and then nothing.
Chief Watertender Peter Tomich—Tomich was in charge of the Utah's engine room. In the engineering plant below deck, water rushed toward the huge boilers. Above the horrible din around him, he yelled to his crew to get out. He could feel the ship slowly turning on her side and knew that in moments any hope of escape would vanish. Because he was an immigrant from Croatia, Tomich's crew was the only family he knew. He continued to shout at them. Knowing that unless the boilers were secured they would rupture and explode, he ignored the evacuation order himself. He calmly moved from valve to valve, setting the gauges, releasing steam here and there, stabilizing and securing the huge boilers that otherwise would have turned the entire ship into a massive inferno from which no one could escape. As the ship continued to roll over, Tomich remained at his station. There was no explosion.
Tomich was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for "extraordinary courage and disregard of his own safety." He is among 58 sailors entombed inside the Utah. His is the only Medal Of Honor in the last century to go unclaimed. His next-of-kin has never been located.
The Swim to Ford Island
Jim Oberto—I was surrounded by what seemed like a stream of bubbles of various shapes and sizes and all going in opposite directions. Looking up I could see a small boat passing just over my head, with guys treading water around it.
I could see the immense dull red hull of the Utah close behind me and the seemingly perpetual bubbles rising all around. The light was getting dimmer by the second. I was still sinking. I tried to get out of the jacket. I grabbed the opening with one hand on each side of the vest and gave a hard yank. Some of the ties broke, part of the vest ripped away. and I was able to slip down and out from under. The vest headed for the bottom without me.
When I broke the surface I was near the quay. Near me was the whaleboat I had seen from below. One of the guys saw me and hauled me in. I barely sat down when all hell broke loose. Splinters of wood began flying all directions. A Japanese Zero was diving on our boat. I dived overboard once more and started underwater toward shore.
I was aware of something happening just to my immediate right. A huge object was slowly rising out of the depths. A Japanese midget submarine was surfacing within rock-throwing distance from where I was. I was amazed to see the bow of a destroyer coming right at me. He swerved at the last minute, delivering a glancing blow to the sub.
Bill Hughes—A leap over the starboard side fairly early in the game found me swimming to the mooring quay, where I was able to hide behind the pilings during the strafing runs. A great danger faced by all of us was jumping on someone in the water, or being jumped on by someone else. Fortunately, I was spared from this hazard.
At the first lull in activity, I swam for shore, and the only scratch I received during World War II occurred as I waded onto Ford Island.
Clarence Durham—As soon as I hit the water I was overcome by the heavy currents, as water was being sucked into the interior of the sunken ship. I would have drowned had it not been that one of the heavy timbers off the deck came within reach and I grabbed onto it. Between the buoyancy of the large hunk of wood and my frantic arm flailing, I made it to the surface.
The timber and I remained together for only a few minutes before captain's gig hoisted me aboard. Our communication officer was picking up survivors in the channel. After I was aboard, the officer directed the gig to pull alongside the ship behind us [the Tangier] in order to enlist a crew with cutting torches to burn escape holes in the Utah's bottom.
The gig debarked several sailors, including myself, onto the old China Clipper dock across the channel from Ford Island.
On Ford Island
Jim Oberto—I'll never know how or why I made it. I became aware of a voice shouting for all of us to jump into a trench near where I emerged. I began hobbling toward the hospital, where a Japanese Zero had targeted us for a strafing run. The plane was coming in just about roof high, right at us. He missed as he zoomed by. He was going around again, and this time he didn't intend to miss. I could see the twinkling of gunfire flashes. For some strange reason, the pilot ceased firing, roared low over me, and shot upward and away.
I arrived at the hospital to a scene of utter devastation. A bomb had landed in the middle of the compound, and bodies were everywhere. Lady volunteers had already set up their stations, and one of them went to work on me immediately. I was covered with oil, and she washed me down with a large cotton ball soaked in alcohol. Another lady found me a pair of trousers and a pair of rubber fireman boots. She sent me to another station, near the stern of the Arizona, where there would be boats to pick up survivors. All of us would be taken across the bay to the main island of Oahu.
Several whaleboats pulled up to the landing point, and we survivors were taken across the bay to the 1010 docks. Whaleboats full of wounded sailors and Marines; the parade of boats seemed to be endless. As each boat approached, it was assigned a position, dependent on the number of men to be disembarked and the severity of their wounds. The boats towing long strings of dead men were relieved of their live cargo first and then told to go to another area of the dock and have the dead removed from the water. Some boats had as many as 10 or 15 tied neck to toe like so many dead fish, plus as many bodies as they could carry inside the boat.
Bill Hughes—I cut my bare foot on a piece of coral. It did not delay me from seeking refuge in the pipeline ditch, where most of the crew ended up until the planes of our newly acquired enemy finally returned to their carriers. There I hunkered down, dripping wet in my skivvy shirt, shorts, and a pair of white knee-high tropical trousers. All my personal belongings, including a prized photo of movie actress Rita Hayworth, remained aboard ship in my locker.
While hunkered down in the ditch, watching terror reign in the skies above, I wondered where in the hell are all these planes were coming from and how long will they keep coming. I also asked my nearby shipmates: "What do you think Washington is going to say about this?" The latter expression stemmed from the fact that I was being trained to copy wireless press news for the ship.
Jack Vaessen—I strained my ears to hear, but there was all silence. Then all of a sudden I heard rat-tat-rat-tat-rat-tat. I said: 'Well, they're using pneumatic chisels.' I learned later that the rat-tat was the planes coming in strafing.
Some voices came back, but I still couldn't understand them. I'd hear a rap. They tried to signal with code or something, but I didn't understand. Then after a while I saw a little red spot—somebody with a cutting torch. They got a little hole burned and the torch went out. Then I panicked. I had three or four feet of space. I'd see the glowing metal caused by the torch again, and it would go out. They burned a circle maybe 16 or 18 inches. I'd always heard how thin the hull of the ship was, but that was an inch, maybe more, of thick steel.
The sparks were coming down on me, but I didn't care. I stayed right under there. It was the best shower I ever had. Pretty soon a guy goes Bang! Bang! Then I backed away. The thing came down, and I was out and gone.
Vaessen had been trapped for three hours. For having kept the lighting system working on the Utah as she sank so that others might escape, he was awarded the Navy Cross. He still has the flashlight and wrench that helped him escape.
Aftermath
Jim Oberto—Aboard the Argonne [AG-31] I was assigned to one of the ship's personnel who took me under his wing so I could get cleaned up, fed, and given a place to sleep for the night. As he and I were standing near his bunk later that evening, American planes swooped low between the Argonne and the California [BB-44]. They were quickly shot out of the air by our own men. Some of the shells came straight across the channel from the California and hit the Argonne. One penetrated the compartment of my new friend. He and I were standing, talking to a group of sailors in front of us. One sailor suddenly collapsed and died right in mid-sentence. The shell came through the armor plate and struck him in the back.
Bill Hughes—That night we brought up ammunition, which had been stored in the bowels of the Argonne. We would go back on December 8th and retrieve ammo from inside the Utah, where welders had cut entrances into the bottom.
We were the lucky ones, collecting ammunition. Many were assigned the job of collecting bodies and body parts from the murky waters of the harbor. Many remains would be buried in unmarked graves.
While aboard the Argonne, one more shipmate from the Utah, Pallas Brown, Seaman Second Class, would die from a stray bullet fired by our nervous gun crews who were shooting at what they thought was another Jap attack. Unfortunately, they were firing on inbound aircraft from the USS Enterprise.
Clarence Durham—My brother Jack and I were reunited when we went aboard the Argonne, where we were given clothing and quickie medical attention. Some corpsman doctored my butt with that old red stuff they used to use.
That night a flight of our own planes came flying in and trigger-happy sailors began trying to shoot them down. A gun on the California broke loose, and red tracer streaks began whooshing through the compartment on the Argonne, where survivors had gathered for the night. I remembered grabbing Jack's arm and heading for a spot below the water line.
Only the Beginning
For many of the survivors, it was only the beginning. Several fought the Pacific War from beginning to end. Jim Oberto served much of the war on board the light cruiser Honolulu (CL-48), which saw action from the South Pacific to the Aleutian Islands. Among the ships Bill Hughes served in was the carrier Saratoga (CV-3), which was torpedoed in February 1942. Jack Vaessen later served on board the Starling (AM-64), a minelayer, and the destroyer Haynsworth (DD-700), which fell victim to a kamikaze attack off Okinawa.
Bill Hughes—The long trek from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay lasted 3 years, 8 months, and 25 days. I can truthfully state that I was where it started the day it started, and where it ended the day it ended.
The long trip was paid for by many American lives as well as lives of our Allies and the Japanese. It is said that the military is only needed when diplomats fail. Let's hope we keep America militarily strong, the diplomats do not fail, and this terrible history will never be repeated.
Although 1.5 million people visit the Arizona Memorial annually, very few have visited the Utah.