Roosevelt famously said, after Japanese forces led an attack on Pearl Harbor. The date is one “which will live in infamy,” as President Franklin D.
Hocker Jr., both of whom volunteered after Pearl Harbor and were combat veterans of the Pacific war.The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. Tom Brokaw hoped "The Greatest Generation," his book about the World War II generation, which included my sailor father and soldier father-in-law, would “in some small way pay tribute to those men and women who have given us the lives we have today.” That was also my hope for my book, which I dedicated to Motor Machinist’s Mate First Class Berry F.
Crews were filming the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" which came out in 1970. So I'm here watching what Dad really went through." When Mike arrived at Pearl Harbor in 1968, he was astonished to see “these Japanese torpedo planes…flying over, dropping torpedoes, and they were setting off explosions in the water. The couple also reared five sons, four of whom, including Mike Vessels, were sailors. He earned a brief leave to come home in February 1942 wasting no time, he and Frances Anita got married on the 25th. Shortly before Christmas, Walter and Annie Mae Vessels were overjoyed to receive a short letter from James Allard promising he was okay. For about two weeks, the families prayed that their loved one was alive but feared he was dead. News bulletins reported that the Arizona was sunk. “They were listening to music, and all of a sudden it came over the radio that Pearl had been bombed,” said Margaret Vessels Shoulta, one of James Allard and Frances Anita’s two daughters. Jerome, and James Allard and Frances Anita’s folks had likely started the midday meal.Īfterwards, Frances Anita tried on her diamond ring, and everybody gathered around the radio. It was a little before noon in western Kentucky when the Pearl Harbor attack started. Jerome Catholic Church, then have Sunday lunch at the Hodge house. The future in-laws agreed on a delivery date: Dec.
More: Officials identify remains of Kentucky sailor killed in Pearl Harbor attack
The sailor mailed them to his parents in Paducah with instructions to pass them on to Frances Anita and her parents. He was thankful he didn’t lose her engagement ring and wedding band, which he bought in Honolulu. Beneath their feet were the remains of more than 900 crewmen still entombed in the battleship, as well as Vessels’ shipboard belongings. James Allard and Frances Anita returned to Pearl Harbor for the 30th anniversary of the attack, and they visited the Arizona memorial. He was badly burned, but Vessels recognized him as Lightfoot, whose injuries were fatal.Ī machine-gun bullet from an enemy plane had hit Vessels in his right leg. On the anti-aircraft deck, he saw just one man standing. “But if we hadn’t been up in the mainmast, we wouldn’t have made it.”Īfter the fires subsided, Vessels and his shipmates began the long climb down. The concussion “tore most of our clothes off,” Vessels said. So Vessels and his mates watched helplessly as enemy horizontal- and dive-bombers worked over the Pacific Fleet.Ībout 15 minutes into the attack, an armor-piercing bomb crashed through the Arizona’s forward deck into a powder magazine, triggering a fiery explosion that heaved the 32,600-ton capital ship’s bow section nearly 50 feet into the air. “Guys were droppin’ off the ladders like flies,” a survivor remembered.īecause it was peacetime, the machine gun ammunition was stowed below. But bomb fragments and strafing fire killed or wounded several other sailors and marines as they scrambled up the mast’s steel legs to their battle stations elsewhere on the mainmast. Vessels and his fellow machine gunners made it to the top. A dizzying 90-feet above the waterline, it was the loftiest spot on the ship. Vessels' was “the birdbath,” an anti-aircraft machine gun position atop the mainmast.