Standing at the USS Utah Memorial in 2001, I met Pharmacist’s Mate Lee B. Soucy, and discovered a special link with him . . . on that incredible Sunday morning exactly 60 years before, we were only a few hundred yards from each other. The Japanese planes that flew at treetop level over my house nearby were the same planes that dropped deadly torpedoes on his ship and sank it.
Here are some of Lee’s comments from that long ago morning:
I had just had breakfast and was looking out a porthole in sick bay when someone said, “What are all those planes doing up there on a Sunday?” Someone else said, “It must be those crazy Marines. They’d be the only ones out maneuvering on a Sunday.” When I looked up in the sky, I saw five or six planes starting their descent toward the hangars at Ford Island, I still did not realize that this was not a drill.
Even after I saw a huge fireball and cloud of black smoke rise from the hangars, and heard explosions, it did not occur to me that these were enemy planes. It was too incredible—simply beyond imagination! Suddenly, I felt the Utah lurch.
Immediately, the bugler sounded “general quarters” (prepare for battle). I grabbed my first-aid bag and ran for my battle station. As I was running down the passageway, another torpedo slammed into us. I vividly remember the violent jolt that knocked me off balance, Getting up a bit dazed, I immediately darted down the ladder below the armored deck. In the tenseness of the moment, I left behind my first-aid kit.
By then, the ship was already listing (tilting). After a minute to two below deck, I heard another bugle call, then the bosun’s whistle, followed by the chant, “Abandon ship . . . abandon ship.”
Scampering up the ladder, I raced toward the open side of the deck. An officer stood by a stack of Mae Wests (life preservers) tossing them to the crew as they ran by. When I reached the open deck, the ship was tilting sharply to one side. I thought about the huge amount of ammunition that was on board and that it would surely blow up soon. Eager to get away from the ship quickly, I discarded my life jacket not wanting anything to slow me down.
As I was tensely poised for a running dive off the partially exposed hull, the ship lunged and again threw me off balance. I ended up on my bottom sliding across the barnacle-encrusted hull of the ship into the water feet first.
After I bobbed up to the surface, I spotted a motor launch fishing men out of the water with a boat hook. I swam toward the launch. After a few strokes, a hail of bullets hit the water a few feet ahead of me. As the strafer banked, I noted the big red circles on the wing tips. Until then, I did not know who had attacked us. I quickly decided that a boat full of men would be a more likely strafing target than a lone swimmer, so I changed course and swam hard for Ford Island.
Reaching the beach exhausted, I was joined by a shipmate, Pharmacist’s Mate Gordon Sumner, who had his first-aid kit wrapped around his shoulders. We rested for a moment, then were picked up by officers in a jeep, who saw our medical armbands. They took us to an emergency treatment station filled with oil-covered casualties from the flaming and sinking ships in the harbor. We quickly used up the small amount of medical supplies in Sumner’s bag.
A line officer came by to inquire how we were getting along. We told him we had run out of everything and were in urgent need of bandages and some kind of solvent or alcohol to cleanse wounds. He ordered someone to strip the beds and make rolls of bandages with the sheets. Then he turned to me and said, “Alcohol? Alcohol? Will whiskey do?”
Despite the confusion, pain, and suffering, there was some gutsy humor. At one point an exhausted swimmer, covered with a gooey film of black oil, saw me cleaning another sailor with a washcloth in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other. He hollered, “Hey Doc, could I have a shot of that medicine?”
Not long ago, Lee brought his family to visit the USS Utah Memorial. While standing on the memorial platform, he gazed across the small span of water at the rusting, shrinking, distorted hulk of his ship. He remembered she had been changed from a battleship into a target ship. Her anti-aircraft guns were covered with steel housing. Sadly, the Utah had gone down without firing a shot. He recalled the armored deck, with layers of heavy timbers for additional protection.
In a practice attack, (see box) the entire crew would go below deck. Then Army or Navy planes would practice dropping bombs (without explosives) or shooting at the Utah. Being shot at was part of their job! Afterward, the crew would come back up on deck, eager to get fresh air.
Today, a thin film of oil surrounds both the sunken USS Utah and USS Arizona. Sometimes it is hard to see, depending on the sunlight, but it is always there, bubbling to the surface. The oil, no longer the lifeblood of once powerful ships, may some day create a serious environmental hazard. No one has yet solved the mystery of how to remove the remaining oil without polluting the harbor. Since both ships are priceless military graveyards where hundreds of honored men are buried, the challenge is even more difficult.
As Lee stood on the platform and looked at his old ship, where his shipmates had their lives cut short, he wondered if it is possible that a well-known saying will come to pass—that the oil will stop flowing when the last survivor has passed on.
Then his thoughts were interrupted when he heard, “Pop, what are those plants growing out of the ship?”
Lee had also wondered about that luxuriant patch of greenery. Not wanting his grandchildren to realize he didn’t know everything, he put his mind in fast forward and blurted out,
“That’s a bouquet from God’s Little Garden to decorate the tomb, the remains of my old ship. Look at the oil sloshing against their leaves. Who but God could make plants flourish in a rusty bed of steel? See, those plants look happy and healthy. Surely God made his face to shine upon them. May they grow in peace forever.”
Lee continued, “Yes, there is new life on the shrinking Utah. And our remaining crew wants to secure a measure of honor for our shipmates who went down with the ship. As more people visit the USS Utah Memorial, and they look at the remains of our old ship resting on the bottom of the harbor, they will probably think to themselves, ‘What an ugly sight.’
“So be it. May that ugly sight serve as a reminder that war IS ugly. May they keep in mind also that the generation which came to believe it was invincible got caught unprepared, and as a consequence suffered great losses.”
Lee likes to end his story with a slogan from WWII that still applies: “Remember Pearl Harbor—keep America alert!”I had just had breakfast and was looking out a porthole in sick bay when someone said, “What are all those planes doing up there on a Sunday?” Someone else said, “It must be those crazy Marines. They’d be the only ones out maneuvering on a Sunday.” When I looked up in the sky, I saw five or six planes starting their descent toward the hangars at Ford Island, I still did not realize that this was not a drill.Even after I saw a huge fireball and cloud of black smoke rise from the hangars, and heard explosions, it did not occur to me that these were enemy planes. It was too incredible—simply beyond imagination! Suddenly, I felt the Utah lurch.
“Immediately, the bugler sounded “general quarters” (prepare for battle). I grabbed my first-aid bag and ran for my battle station. As I was running down the passageway, another torpedo slammed into us. I vividly remember the violent jolt that knocked me off balance, Getting up a bit dazed, I immediately darted down the ladder below the armored deck. In the tenseness of the moment, I left behind my first-aid kit.
“By then, the ship was already listing (tilting). After a minute to two below deck, I heard another bugle call, then the bosun’s whistle, followed by the chant, “Abandon ship . . . abandon ship.”
