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The story of the Pearl Harbor attack has been covered very completely in official reports, history books, and novels. The fact that the first shot was fired by the USS Ward (DD-139) while on patrol off the harbor entrance is well known. The Roberts report officially gave credit to the Ward for her actions that morning, and even the movies have followed up that credit. In "Tora—Tora—Tora,” the action is graphically and fairly depicted. The Japanese also acknowledged the action by claiming in a monitored Radio Tokyo broadcast that "The U. S. destroyer started the war by sinking a Japanese submarine.”
With the ever-increasing threat of war, the Ward had been taken from red lead row, refurbished, and returned to active duty. She sailed for Pearl Harbor in March 1940, and there she was assigned to the offshore patrol with two other old four-pipers, the USS Chew (DD-106), USS Schley (DD-103), and the USS Allen (DD-66), an even older flush-decker. Patrol consisted of one week at sea outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor, between Diamond Head and Barber’s Point, followed by three weeks in port or in training exercises. Changes were made on Saturdays, and on 6 December, the Ward had gone to sea for antiaircraft firing practice, then on station. This firing practice was later to be regretted to some extent as all the old 3-inch AA gun ammunition had been replaced with target ammunition, hence, on the morning of the 7th, it was the only AA ammo readily available. The ship came under air attack only once, however, and the huge black puffs of target ammo explosions proved more capable of driving off the Japanese planes than the live ammo probably would have been.
The captain of the Ward was then Lieutenant Commander W. W. Outerbridge who was awarded the Navy Cross in February of 1942 for his conduct in this action. He was proud of his crew that morning and his crew was proud of him.
The Ward carried two 5-inch guns, each of which was manned by a Reserve crew. The crew had been
given very little chance for actual target practice in the Ward, but when the unknown submarine, for whid1 the ship had been searching by sound gear and visud methods, finally surfaced at 0730 off the entrance t0 Pearl, they were ready. Lieutenant Commander Outer- bridge had made efforts to halt the submarine by sigfld’ but to no avail, and he finally ordered the gun ere*1 to fire. The effectiveness of that shot is well recorded for it sent the submarine to the bottom.
The Ward continued to serve with the offshore p3’ trol until 1943, when she was sent to Bremerton Washington, for conversion to a fast transport. At that time, the historic gun that had fired the first shot tf3S removed, and a plate was attached thereto, proclaiming the gun’s history. Subsequently sent to the Naval Gufl Factory in Washington, it was inadvertently discovered there years later by Lieutenant Commander D. J Morgan, a member of the crew on 7 December' Through his efforts and those of civic groups, the gun was shipped to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1958, and enshrined as a permanent memorial on the grounds of the state capitol.
In 1944, as APD-16, the Ward's career came to 3 sudden end when she was blasted by kamikazes to the bottom of Ormoc Bay off Leyte.
But what of the crew that fired the first shot? Tbe gun crew were all from the vicinity of St. Paul. Their basic training had been carried out on summer crui#5 in the USS Paducah (ex PG-is) stationed on the Great Lakes at Duluth. The pre-World War II Naval Resent concept was for the Reserve divisions to be trained as complete units, with the organization assigned to 3 specific type of ship. This was true of the 47th Division at St. Paul, which had a full complement to take over a destroyer. This Division was called to active duty >n January 1940 and sent to San Diego. There, with the addition of a few permanent party regular Navy pet' sonnel, they were assigned to the Ward, and in Match' sailed for Pearl Harbor, unaware that they would soon be called upon to take their place in history.
fV ^ °^t^e 47th Division is held to commemorate eVer'to'be-forgotten high moment of their lives as untried Reserve crew of the destroyer rhe ^°Perating as part of the inshore patrol, they sank
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it prtUr‘ately, all of the men who were in the Ward harbor returned safely to their homes after 3ii(J Q^' Most of them still reside in the St. Paul area, evciy 7 December, a reunion of the surviving
k st Japanese submarine at the beginning of the etaveen the United States and Japan.
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