The day started like any other Sunday morning in Hawaii – sunny and beautiful. All of the battleships in the U.S. Pacific fleet were moored on Battleship Row, near Ford Island. Sailors who had come in from liberty the night before were finishing their breakfasts, cleaning up the mess hall and getting their ship ready for inspection the next day. Much of the work had already been done – sailors were expecting a relaxed day in paradise.
(above) The USS Oklahoma.
But, December 7, 1941 was not like any other day at Pearl Harbor. Signalman 1st Class Paul Goodyear was preparing for the 8:00-12:00 watch, locating the ships in the harbor so he would know which way to use the signal lights or semaphores to address them. That is when Goodyear and some of his strikers looked up and saw a line of planes, a half-dozen or more, flying from the starboard to the port side of the USS Oklahoma. Goodyear remembers the first plane dropped a bomb and the second plane dropped a bomb, but that really wasn’t unusual.
“At that time, Ford Island was a naval base, a naval air station where the planes from the carriers would land while getting in some flying time with their ship in port,” Goodyear told me when we met in August. “If for some reason they had gone out for bombing practice and hadn’t expended the bombs they carried, rather than landing with weight under the wings or fuselage, they would just drop it on that little spit of land that stuck out there between west block and Pearl Harbor,” Goodyear said.
Goodyear’s interest intensified when a third plane dropped a bomb. “We knew something was going on,” Goodyear said. “I had a pair of 750 binoculars, and I put them to my eyes and that (Japanese) meatball hit me right in the eye. Right then we all knew it was the Japanese.”
Thus, began Paul Goodyear’s story of tragedy and survival. Goodyear jumped ship, swam to the USS Maryland and later made it to the safety of Ford Island, but 429 of his crew mates were not so fortunate. The “Okie” had the second-highest number of casualties of any battleship at Pearl Harbor, behind the USS Arizona.
Goodyear says the Oklahoma was being cleaned up for Admiral’s inspection on Monday morning, so it was not compartmentalized, and counter-flooding was not possible, like it was on the USS California and USS West Virginia. “By counter-flooding,” Goodyear said, “they were able to sink the ship straight down and that saved hundreds of lives on those ships. Our kids were trapped on that revolving ship (the USS Oklahoma) and they didn’t even know where they were.”
It took 11 and a half minutes for the Oklahoma to roll over into the water. It took a week for the survivors to get out of their wet, oily clothes; two weeks for the survivors to be allowed back in the mess hall. Goodyear says he and the other survivors had to make do the best they could until just before Christmas.
Paul Goodyear continued to serve in the Navy in the South Pacific until the war was over. He was preparing to be part of the U.S. force that would invade Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I was happy when they dropped the atomic bomb,” he said, “because then I knew we could begin to live our lives as a normal human being again.”
The operation to right the USS Oklahoma began on March 8, 1943. It was completed more than three months later. Divers had to wear gas masks while removing the remains of those who died and other decomposed materials from the Oklahoma’s compartments. The ship came afloat in November and by late December it was in drydock. It was stripped of guns and sold for scrap (for $46,000) two years later. On May 10, 1947 two tug boats departed Pearl Harbor to take the Oklahoma to San Francisco. About 540 miles out, during a storm at sea, the Oklahoma started to list and broke the tow line, sinking to the bottom of the Pacific for the final time.
Paul Goodyear is one of the leading proponents of building a USS Oklahoma Memorial at Pearl Harbor. He is looking forward to attending the ceremonies dedicating Pearl Harbor’s newest memorial on December 7, 2007. More information about the USS Oklahoma Memorial can be found at www.ussoklahoma.com.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Paul Goodyear was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 3, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
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