Understandably, the battleship Arizona (BB-39) gets the lion’s share of attention as a Pearl Harbor memorial because of the huge loss of life among her crew members. Those who served in the Utah (AG-16), a former battleship later used as a gunnery training ship and bombing target, are used to playing second fiddle. Their ship is still at Pearl, partially submerged on the side of Ford Island opposite from where the Arizona lies.
On board during the attack in 1941 was Pharmacist’s Mate Lee Soucy. He happened to be in sickbay that morning and looked out a porthole to see airplanes approaching. His interest turned to urgency, when Japanese torpedoes jolted the Utah, which soon began capsizing to port. By the time the general alarm sounded, he was wearing his brassard, an armband with a red cross on it to designate his specialty. He hurried to his battle station but didn’t stay long, because he heard an order to abandon ship. As he left, his movements were accelerated by a jolt when mooring lines snapped. He scraped across the barnacle- encrusted bottom as he made his way into the water and eventually to safety.
Today Soucy’s red-cross brassard is on display at the Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, as a tangible reminder of that day. He has made it his mission to keep the memory of his ship alive and to dispel myths—notably, the oft-repeated assertion that the Utah came in for heavy pounding from the Japanese because she looked like an aircraft carrier. Soucy, who must have had a collateral duty as a comedian, says of the ship, “It didn’t look any more like a carrier than I look like Marilyn Monroe—even if I were naked and wearing sunglasses.” Or perhaps especially if he were naked and wearing sunglasses.
As part of his self-appointed mission, Soucy wrote an article for a 1994 issue of American Legion magazine. One of the many who read it was Cal De Knikker, a former sailor who lives in Woodland, California. He was intrigued by Soucy’s words since he had known nothing about the Utah. He determined not only to learn more but also to honor the “other” ship and her crewmen. In 1995 he won an American flag in an Elks’ Lodge raffle and arranged for it to be flown over the hulk of the Utah on 4 July. The flag was then folded away until a ceremony on 7 December that year in California.
More than 500 people, including 14 former crew members of the old target ship, attended the ceremony. Navy and Marine Corps recruiters presented the flag to the Utah veterans.
Because Cal De Knikker was a boiler technician during his service in the destroyer Richard S. Edwards (DD-950) in the mid-1970s, he especially identified with Chief Water Tender Peter Tomich. Tomich lost his life in 1941 when he went down to a fireroom to secure the Utah’s boilers and prevent them from exploding. He also made sure his shipmates evacuated the space, though he was not able to escape himself. The Navy awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor and named a World War II ship for him, the destroyer escort Tomich (DE-242).
In the spring of 2001 De Knikker received a call from a former neighbor, Dick Miller, who said he had something that might be of interest. When they met, De Knikker discovered that the item was a set of metal letters, U-T-A-H, mounted on a piece of wood. They had probably once been affixed to a ship’s boat or displayed on board ship. They had been salvaged on 8 December 1941 and had since been in Miller’s family. De Knikker pledged to do the right thing with them. When he went to Hawaii for the 60th anniversary later in 2001, he took along a photo of the letters and showed it to Daniel Martinez, historian for the Arizona Memorial. Martinez confirmed their authenticity and said the National Park Service would like to get the letters.
In December 2004, De Knikker gathered his family for a pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor. On the afternoon of 6 December, Calvin, wife Christine, and sons Christian and Jordan were on board the memorial. There they presented the mounted letters to Jim Taylor, who coordinates interments of veterans’ ashes for former crewmen of both the Utah and Arizona. Taylor then presented the mounted letters to the National Park Service.
The other part of the ceremony brought aboard the remains of Thomas C. Molay, who had been a photographer’s mate second class in December 1941. He had visited the memorial two years earlier and, as his widow Dottie later explained to a reporter for The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, “It was then he said he wanted to go back there when he died.” After Molay’s passing in February 2004, she saw to it that his wishes would be honored. She and the De Knikkers were there in December when divers took his ashes down inside the old ship—together, once again, with former shipmates.
Ten years after Lee Soucy’s article about the Utah, Cal De Knikker and Dot- tie Molay have answered the question raised by the article’s title: “Who Will Remember It When We Are Gone?”