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At long last, 66 years to the day after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes, the USS Oklahoma has a lasting memorial at Pearl Harbor. On Friday, December 7, more than a dozen survivors of the sneak attack and the families of some of the 429 who died, attended ceremonies at Ford Island, and officially dedicated the new USS Oklahoma Memorial, on a site just about 150 yards from where the “Okie” was moored on December 7, 1941.
On a day that began with a moving tribute to all who served, and those who died, at Pearl Harbor on the day the Japanese struck, the USS Oklahoma was honored with the unveiling of a marble and granite monument that commemorates the battleship that suffered the second-largest loss of life in the Japanese attack. Dignitaries from the states of Oklahoma and Hawaii, the U.S. Navy, the National Park Service, members of the USS Oklahoma Memorial Executive Committee, survivors and family members of the Oklahoma’s crew attended the nearly 2-hour ceremony.
Sun and showers alternated throughout the memorial service and dedication, forcing those gathered under tents to protect them from the wind and rain. However, for those who had worked so long and hard to secure the site and create the memorial, it was a glorious day.
The ceremony began with a welcome from Rear Admiral Doug McClain, a former student at Putnam City High School in Oklahoma City, who is now Director of Global Operations for the U.S. Strategic Command. Following a traditional Hawaiian blessing and the invocation, the colors were presented by the Navy Junior ROTC from Claremore, Oklahoma and the Marine Junior ROTC cadets from U.S. Grant High School in Oklahoma City. The U.S. Marine Corps Band played the National Anthem.
(above: Governor Brad Henry speaks at the USS Oklahoma Memorial Dedication ceremony at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii)
Then, architect Don Beck discussed the design of the memorial, and its 429 marble posts, each of which contain the name of one of those who died aboard the mighty battleship.
Honored speakers included (in order of speaking) Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii; Admiral Timothy Keating, U.S. Pacific Command; Mary Fallin, U.S. Representative from Oklahoma; Tom Cole, U.S. Representative from Oklahoma; Neil Abercrombie, U.S. Representative from Hawaii; Brad Henry, Governor of Oklahoma; and Lyle Laverty, Assistant Secretary of the Interior. Oklahoma State Senator Jim Reynolds introduced USS Oklahoma survivor Ed Vezey and Lisa Ridge, granddaughter of USS Oklahoma Petty Officer Paul Nash, for comments.
(above: USS Oklahoma survivor Ed Vezey of Center, Colorado was among the speakers at the dedication ceremony.)
Signalman 1st Class Paul Goodyear, a USS Oklahoma survivor who was one of the driving forces behind the memorial, then raised the American flag above the site. The ceremony closed with a 21-gun salute, taps and the playing of Amazing Grace on a lone bagpipe.
Among the Oklahomans at the service, we saw Governor Brad Henry and First Lady Kim Henry; Treasurer Scott Meacham; U.S. Representatives Tom Cole and Mary Fallin; Speaker of the House Lance Cargill; State Representative Gary Banz; State Senator Jim Reynolds; State Representative Ryan Kiesel; and State Representative Guy Liebmann.
Also, former State Representatives Debbie Blackburn and Greg Piatt; Dr. Bob Blackburn, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Historical Society; the members of the USS Oklahoma Memorial Executive Committee, including co-chairs Tucker McHugh and Admiral Greg Slavonic; memorial architect Don Beck; Blake Wade, Jeannie Edney, and Lou Kerr from the Oklahoma Centennial Commission; the survivors and their families.
(above (l-r): Kevin King and State Senator Jim Reynolds do a “rubbing” on one of the posts at the USS Oklahoma Memorial.
The USS Oklahoma was raised in 1943, made sea-worthy and sold for scrap. In May, 1947, she sank in a storm, about 540 miles out of Hawaii, while being towed to San Francisco. She rests there now, and almost 400 of her crew members, most unidentified, are entombed at the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Honolulu.
Jeff Phister, co-author of “Battleship Oklahoma (BB-37)” writes:
Built to keep the peace, not once in her twenty-five years of service were her massive 14-inch guns fired in belligerence. She was a great ship - with a proud crew. Neither will be forgotten.
Ah hui ho (until next time), Dick Pryor
“I knew it was war”
October 3rd
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.)
“We wanted to see how the devil lived”
September 28th
Emmett Steeds entered the National Guard in 1936, served for a year, and got out. He was working for a hardware store and remembers he was eating lunch when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared war.
I recently visited with Steeds at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City. He told me, “We had no choice. They jumped on us without provacation, so when they bombed Pearl Harbor there was no question about going into war.”
Steeds’ unit was still in Abilene, Texas, so he went home, told his wife, packed up his things and got on the bus to Fort Barkley, Texas to rejoin his outfit. “Within a few days,” he said, “practically everybody that had gotten out had come back to the unit.”
So began World War II for U.S. Army Platoon Sergeant Emmett Steeds. Steeds spent more than a year in training before sailing out of New York, across the North Atlantic, to North Africa, which was already under American control. After landing at Oran, Steeds and the others in the 45th Division, 179th Infantry headed to Sicily, then Italy, where they landed at Salerno. He received his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant from General George S. Patton for his service in the Italian campaign.
The 45th marched across western Europe and Steeds reached the Dachau concentration camp within hours after it had been liberated. He remembers the dead he found there, bodies stacked in boxcars, and finding a lot of people barely alive. It was an experience that haunted him for months.
The 45th continued on to Munich, to become part of the occupation force. The regiment’s headquarters was set up in a rather unlikely place: an apartment where Adolph Hitler had lived. Steeds remembers it was a big house in Munich, and some of the officers from the U.S. Headquarters of the 179th stayed in the building. A famous picture at the 45th Infantry Division Museum shows another Oklahoma soldier from the 45th, Sgt. Arthur E. Peters, reclining on Hitler’s bed, reading a copy of Mein Kampf. The picture made it onto the cover of the May 14, 1945 edition of Life magazine, with the caption, “Get your feet off my bed.”
Steeds stayed in the military after World War II and served in Korea, where he rose to the rank of Captain. The Blair, Oklahoma native worked for the postal service in Oklahoma City for 30 years. He’s long since retired, but at the age of 90, still volunteers at the 45th Infantry Division Museum on weekends.
You can see two of his prized possessions at the museum: a Nazi medallion and personal stationery of Adolph Hitler that Steeds “liberated” from the Fuehrer’s Munich Apartment.
If you have a chance to visit the museum, I encourage you to go - but plan to spend some time. There is a lot to take in, and you might get to visit with Emmett Steeds. If you see him, tell him, “Thanks.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Emmett Steeds was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 29, 2007. To see the story, click on the “Videos” link on this website and go to “OETA’S Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)
“Everybody was together”
September 25th
When June Buckley says everybody was together - for the troops and against the enemy, she really means it. Like most Americans, she feared the enemy and the consequences for the Allies should the Axis win World War II. The war, for June Buckley, was also personal. Her husband and her brother were involved in the fighting.
Buckley graduated from high school in Abilene, Texas, where she worked at Camp Barkley as a photographer and receptionist. She remembers dancing with servicemen at USO clubs “because they were all so young, and we wanted to do all we could for the servicemen.” Buckley said, “we also played checkers with the soldiers, and sold war bonds. Not only were we entertaining them, but we were having a good time.”
When her husband Andy went overseas, she moved to Oklahoma to be with her parents. She said it was terrible watching your husband leave. “It was terrible,” she said, “because you didn’t know if they were going to come back. Of course you didn’t think of that, but in the back of your mind it was there.”
She worked at the Air Force Base in Ardmore for a short time, but she heard about a new aircraft assembly plant in Oklahoma City that needed workers, so Buckley went to work at the Douglas Aircraft Plant as a riveter.
“The work was easy,” Buckley said. “You just had to know where to rivet and get those wings on the plane.” The Douglas Aircraft Plant produced thousands of C-47’s and provided maintenance on other aircraft during the war.
Buckley worked in Building 3001, which later became a key part of Tinker Air Force Base. The atmosphere in Oklahoma was good. She remembers many women being pen pals who wrote letters to the servicemen to cheer them up. She says it was an atmosphere of helping each other.
“Everyone pulled together because they cared,” Buckley said. “They were all angry that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and killed our servicemen, so they just wanted to take care of the enemy and our servicemen and win the war as quickly as possible, and bring them home.”
(above) June Buckley, who was chosen in 2002 as “Rosie the Riveter” for the Douglas Aircraft Plant.
(below) After the war, June Buckley earned her private pilot’s license. She wanted to be a commercial pilot, but found that women were not being hired for those positions, so she made her career working at Tinker Air Force Base and for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(June Buckley was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 25, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
Recording History
September 12th
What should future generations know about war and what your generation did in World War II? That’s a question photojournalist Boots Kennedye and I have asked each of our veterans in interviews for the Oklahoma World War II Stories series. The answers have varied, but a common thread is clear - they saw America attacked and the world threatened, and did what had to be done.
Interviewing these everyday heroes has been an enriching experience for Boots and me. Meeting them, and producing their stories, is a real privilege. Some WWII veterans have a difficult time discussing their experiences of more than half a century ago, but the ones we talked to were eager to give their thoughts about war, World War II, and their participation in it. To be sure, it was a defining time in the history of our nation, and for many veterans, it was a defining moment in their lives.
Each interview lasted more than an hour. In that amount of time you can learn a lot about someone and make a personal connection. They are grandparents and great-grandparents now, yet for most the images and details are as fresh as they were more than 60 years ago. Looking into their eyes was like looking into a window to the past - to a time that seems so far away, yet is still important and relevant. We were struck by their sincerity, willingness to share (and sacrifice), and their perspective on our world. As much as anything, I think they want the lessons they learned to endure for the benefit of future generations.
Our pieces will run less than five minutes, but we are providing the entire interviews to the Oklahoma Historical Society, for archiving at the Oklahoma History Center. Some of the interviews may also wind up at the Library of Congress. We are grateful to have the chance to honor our veterans this way - it’s the least we can do for what they have done for the rest of us.
I encourage you to watch our Oklahoma World War II stories on the Oklahoma News Report beginning on Friday, September 21st at 6:30 p.m. I also encourage you to get involved in our story collection project and see for yourself how meaningful a discussion with a veteran can be. Each one has a story; each one should be remembered.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(above: Dick Pryor with Ned Hockman, Lt. Colonel, Air Force Reserves)
(below: Boots Kennedye with Sergeant Alexander Mathews)
Oklahoma Veterans Tell About WWII
September 12th
Beginning on Friday, September 21st, be sure to watch OETA’s Oklahoma News Report as we begin a 14-part series - Oklahoma World War II Stories. This is one of the most ambitious efforts ever for OETA News - an effort worthy of its inspiration, Ken Burns’ documentary, The War.
Although he admits he got started about ten years too late, America’s pre-eminent documentary filmmaker decided he needed to tell the story of World War II, much as he had done in his ground-breaking documentary, The Civil War. OETA, The Oklahoman, the Oklahoma History Center, the 45th Infantry Division Museum, and our other partners recognized the importance of the project and launched a statewide story collection project, inviting participation from members of the public. We also decided that OETA should produce a series of first-hand accounts for distribution over-the-air and on-line.
Our “War Team” started spreading the word about our story collection project. We made phone calls, sent e-mails, networked with friends, and used on-air and on-line promotion to collect the names of veterans and volunteers willing to tell their stories. Photojournalist Charles “Boots” Kennedye and I hit the road on August 3rd, taping interviews with veterans in High Definition. We’ve also been furiously gathering video, music and still photos to bring the stories to life.
We completed our first round of fifteen interviews on August 24th and began logging tape, researching and writing. Charles is currently in the editing phase - working his magic in our new state-of-the-art High Definition edit suite. I’ll tell you more about our travels, the people we’ve met and the production process later. But right now, I’ve go to get back to viewing videotape.
Be sure to mark your calendar for September 21st, when the first of our Oklahoma World War II stories airs statewide at 6:30 p.m. on the Oklahoma News Report.
Until next time, Dick Pryor