In August 1943, future Vice Admiral John L. Chew was an assistant gunnery officer lieutenant commander on board the USS Helena (CL-50) in combat in the “Slot” running from Bougainville to Guadalcanal and Tulagi. The Helena had been credited with sinking nine Japanese warships, assisting in sinking two more, and damaging five others—“almost a one-ship Navy”—when she took three torpedoes and, in less than 15 minutes, went down.
Chew, the senior survivor, was oil-soaked in the Pacific for two and a half days before coming ashore and being sheltered by natives on Vella Lavella island, with Japanese close at hand. The following edited excerpts are taken from his August 1945 Proceedings article recounting the ordeal and his Naval Institute oral history:
A group of about 75 men collected around me. We swam, trying to keep together, in hope of being picked up by one of our destroyers. That night in the water most of us were violently nauseated. Men continued to drift away; we doubtless lost several men that way. Some of them had been injured, and others were suffering from shock.
In the early morning light, to our astonishment, we discovered that the bow of the Helena was still floating. There were a few men hanging on to it. I swam over but was too exhausted to pull myself up. At about 1000, a Liberator flew over and dropped three rubber boats. One sank, but we recovered the other two. I began to realize that the bow, instead of being a place of refuge, might turn out to be the opposite. Jap planes were likely to come along soon and bomb or strafe us.
During the second night, we tried first to make Kolombangara. We could see the outline of the island in the dark. Since there was a good breeze blowing up the “Slot,” I decided to try to reach Vella Lavella. With each boat was a couple of poles intended to be used as paddles. We lashed them into crosstrees and attached our shirts as sails. By that time, the men had become greatly discouraged, in the water for more than 24 hours without food or drink.
By Thursday morning, the island was still six or seven miles away. I decided to swim, possibly get aid from the natives in rescuing my men. Two others joined me. By adjusting my life belt around my chest, I could swim breast stroke more easily. It turned out to be a long, long swim. I began to have hallucinations, more than once swimming in the wrong direction.
As we approached the island that afternoon, a canoe with two natives came out from the beach. They took one look at me, examined my identification tag, and asked “You Melican?” I replied, “You betcha.” I soon was on the beach, where a few of our men already had arrived on some of the Helena’s rafts.
The next thing I remember, I was taking a drink of coconut milk from a shell. It tasted like the nectar of the Gods. Providentially, we had landed opposite the side of the island where the Japanese garrison headquarters was located. When we finally were ready to leave the beach for a hideaway in the hills, I got to my feet and immediately fell flat on my face. I was placed on a litter. The natives had a hard time moving 104 exhausted men. They took us about two and one-half miles to Tom’s house. Tom was a Chinese who became our strong defender.
On the seventh day, we got word we were going to be rescued. It was a daring rescue, with two destroyer-transports handling the work and four destroyers screening them. Once on board a destroyer, my first thought was of food, the second was of treatment for the sores afflicting my ankles.
After staying the night on Tulagi, we were taken to Guadalcanal for air evacuation. There really was no hospitalization. A corpsman told me, “You’d better get your Purple Heart.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Well, you’ve got immersion sores,” he explained. I said, “Look, I’m so happy to be here, just give me an aspirin and forget it!”
