Oklahoma WWII

Growing up in Idabel, Zee Howell thought it would be fun to be in the Navy.  It might have been the book, Treasure Island, or the fact he had an uncle who was a Navy guy that inspired him, but mostly he wanted to help his mother and four sisters.  Jobs for high schoolers were nil, so he decided to enlist in the Navy in 1940 and get positioned, rather than wait to be drafted.  He also wanted to see the world.

That, he did.  Howell went through training in San Diego, then was off aboard the tanker ship USS Neches to haul oil to places like Panama, Alaska and Hawaii.  Howell figured the U.S. would get drawn into war, but he really wasn’t expecting the kind of sneak attack the Japanese launched at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Howell admitted the United States had to go to war after that attack - there wasn’t any time to think about it.  He viewed the Japanese as the enemy, obviously, but didn’t have ill feelings toward the Japanese people, they were just “the enemy.”  He saw the war from beginning to end, and later served in Korea.   As a sailor, he went all over the South Pacific, and was comforted by the knowledge that land was always just 2 miles away.  “Unfortunately,” he said, “that land was two miles straight down.”

“I was at Pearl Harbor when it started and I was in the Phillipines when it ended, so it was very educational,” Howell said.  “I learned a lot.”

Howell now lives southwest of Norman.  He’s retired, but at the age of 85 is quite active.  He’s a big Sooner sports fan, and a frequent participant in the public discourse of his hometown.  He hopes future generations and leaders will learn from the experiences of his generation. 

“Our generation was pretty tough,” Howell said.  “Whatever happened, you just took it, did the best you could, and survived…and went on.  That generation that grew up then, they just learned to do and make do and do without.  We worked hard.  We learned to do a lot of things, of necessity, we had to.  Tom Brokaw may have left that out.  We didn’t do it particularly by choice, but because we had to do it, and we’re better for it, too.  We can withstand hardships better than anybody else.  We know about it, we understand it, we’ve seen it, we’ve had it, and we just need to pass some of that along to our kids.” 

(above)  Zee Howell points out his position in a picture of the survivors of the USS Neches, taken the morning the ship was sunk by Japanese torpedoes.  Howell and his shipmates waited in their life rafts for several hours before they were rescued by the USS Jarvis.

(below)  Howell and other survivors of the USS Neches at a reunion in San Diego in 1996.

Zee Howell’s story is the first of our Oklahoma World War II Stories, airing on OETA’s Oklahoma News Report preceding each episode of “The War.” 

Until next time, Dick Pryor

(Zee Howell was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 21, 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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