Brett Ashton - Vengeance - Hatred and Honor

Just as we rounded the bow of the Okie a Zero swooped low over Battleship Row, strafing everything in its path—especially the sailors who were in the water. The pilot was aiming directly at us, but the strafing stopped just short of the boat. “Goddamn bastards!” I thought, “Shooting at defenseless people.”

We weren’t nearly as defenseless as the pilot would have hoped because the Maryland gunners were returning fire long before the Jap’s fire even came close to reaching us. That Jap plane burst into flames and flew almost straight over my head as I watched and shouted with glee, “ Go straight to hell you yellow, slant-eyed son-of-a-bitch! ” It trailed smoke and fire; barely hanging onto the air, it flew across Pearl Harbor toward Hospital Point beyond my view and crashed. A black cloud of smoke rose from behind the ships and buildings that obscured my view of the hospital.

“My God, Susan and James are at the hospital, and that plane might have just crashed into it!” I thought as fear began to rise in me like never before. “Not my wife and son!” The thought of ordering the driver of the boat over to hospital briefly crossed my mind, but my sense of duty intervened. The dispensary on Ford Island was closer and I couldn’t tie up this boat for personal reasons when so many others were in need of its help. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Susan and James were most likely okay and would have to wait, and I would just have to hope. I’ll try to get a message over to them as soon as I can.

Susan, in addition to being a patient in the maternity ward at the time, was also a nurse at the hospital. If I knew my wife, she would be doing everything she could, not only to take care of herself and James, but to take care of every other patient she could, in spite of the fact that she had delivered a baby just several days earlier. “They’re alright,” I told myself as I tried to push them to the back of my mind.

The small boat rounded the bow of the Maryland and the smell of burning oil was heavy in the air. The wind was blowing the smoke off to the west, which meant we would have to pass through it to get to the dispensary once we got on the island.

Looking around, I saw smoke and fire everywhere, but still I couldn’t take my eyes off of the direction of the hospital. And the Japs were still coming. One dive bomber planted a bomb right on the destroyer in the floating dry dock near Hospital Point. And then another, and another. Several others dropped bombs on the Pennsylvania and other ships in dry dock with her.

The boat I was on landed, and I proceeded to try to help unload the injured, almost forgetting I was one of them. There was a chief on the beach with a small truck, which was no doubt intended for use as a makeshift ambulance. I helped him load the injured and told him to go ahead and take them to the dispensary. As I turned to look back across the harbor toward the hospital, I felt a tug on my arm as the chief said, “With all due respect sir, don’t you think you should come with us?”

I noticed the side mirror of the truck was pointing in my direction and was shocked at the reflection that I saw. I was almost unrecognizable, even to myself. That was when I got the first look at my whole self since the attack began. I was covered with blood, some of it my own, and oil. It wasn’t twenty minutes before that I was eating breakfast in the wardroom with my fellow officers in a clean-pressed uniform, laughing and talking about Babe Ruth. Things had become so suddenly and drastically different that it seemed ages ago.

From that reflection, I don’t know how he even knew I was an officer, but somehow I sensed, lieutenant commander or not, respect or not, this chief wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And he was probably right anyhow, so I got onto the truck.

We were among the earliest wounded to arrive at the dispensary, so we got treated pretty quickly. The medical crew was obviously preparing for an influx of injured patients as we arrived. I got my wounds cleaned and stitched in no time. The doctor wanted to put a unit of blood in me and give me something for pain. I asked him if I would live without them. He said yes, so I declined, telling him to save them for somebody who needed them more. He ordered me to stay off my feet as much as possible and not to leave the dispensary grounds until I was released because I was low on blood and could potentially pass out.

A little bit later, I was on the ground floor of the dispensary near the center courtyard. A nurse was yelling at me to “stop trying to help move other injured patients because I would rip out the stitches in my side, and they weren’t going to bother sewing me up again,” when I heard more level bombers flying overhead. These were close. I looked out the window up at the sky and saw a plane release a bomb.

For the second time in the same day, time changed for me. In almost slow motion, the bomb glided down from the plane that released it, straight toward us in the dispensary. Without thinking, I quickly grabbed the nurse and shoved her to the floor and away from the window while shouting “ Everybody down! Incoming! ”

There was a dull thud and the sound of small debris pelting the window as the bomb hit the ground just outside. “This is it,” I thought. “I’m going to die.”

Most bombs for naval applications have a trigger device that keeps them from going off on impact so they penetrate to the inside of their target and blow them apart from within. They do more damage that way. “It’s a timed device,” I thought, “Any second now.”

I looked at the face of the nurse lying on the floor next to me. She was very pretty, maybe five to ten years younger than me, light brown shoulder-length hair and obviously scared to death. As the seconds ticked by, I watched the expression on her face change from fear to wonderment, as I’m sure mine did, when we gradually realized we were still alive, and likely to remain that way for at least awhile.

Slowly we got up and went over to the window and looked out. In the courtyard, embedded right there in the pavement, little more than ten feet from the window was a bomb. It was a dud.

I looked at the nurse, and she looked back at me. Before I knew what was happening she grabbed me and gave me a hug and said to me with a smile as she released me, “Okay sailor, I’ll fix your stitches this time, but never again.” I looked down at my side and saw blood seeping through the bandages. Sure enough, some of them had come undone.

As she put more stitches in my side, I overheard somebody say “Hey, one of the battleships is underway and making a run for it!” Even being low on blood with stitches in my head and side, I still had to go out to see the ship that was attempting to escape. As soon as the nurse finished putting the bandages back on, I got up and began making my way to the exit.

Stepping over and around the injured that were rapidly beginning to pile up everywhere, I went out onto the lawn of the dispensary. “They probably could use a little extra space in here anyway,” I thought as I stepped around the wounded and dodged racing medical personnel. I couldn’t help but think how lucky I was, relatively speaking, of course. There were a lot of burns, very bad ones. The skin would just peel right off of them as the doctors and nurses tried to pick them up and move them. The sound of moaning and screaming filled the air, right along with the smell of burnt flesh and acrid smoke from the fires which surrounded Ford Island.

Most of the injured were covered in fuel oil in addition to the injuries they had sustained. I recognized some of them as being from the crew of my own ship, but instead of trying to talk to them, I decided maybe it was best to stay out of the way.