Remembering Pearl Harbor: A sailor's first-hand account of that infamous day

My dad Frank Dolan, a weldor on the repair ship USS Vestal, which was tied alongside the battleship USS Arizona, remembered the events that unfolded at Pearl Harbor on this date in 1941 like this...

Sunday was "holiday routine"… a no-work day. The officers and men would ‘sleep-in,’ but not me. I was eager to get my ratings. So, after morning chow, I went to the foc’sle… which was an upper deck in the forward part of the ship, to do my studying… Noise! A loud noise! A loud, booming noise came! Then came the roar of airplanes. I looked over the starboard (right) side of the ship and saw planes—many planes. Some were overhead, but many were just a few feet above the water. They were launching what I thought were “dummy” torpedoes. "Neat, real neat!" I thought. But when the first one exploded against a battleship’s side, I thought some dumb American pilot dropped a real live torpedo by accident.

Even as torpedoes were exploding on impact against the sides of the battleships, I told myself there must be some mistake. The planes were so close we could easily see the pilots. Then the red ball designation of the Japanese on the sides of the planes came into view. Immediately I was off the foc’csle down the port passageway aft on the main deck and onto the starboard side to watch. Again, I was not really believing what I was witnessing. More torpedo planes, and then came the dive bombers. I had no battle station as at this time we were at peace with Japan, and had only one 3-inch anti-aircraft gun, and a couple of Thompson machine guns on board. Our 5-inch broadside guns were for use against surface craft.

My next move was to head for the weld shop. To get there I had to go down a ladder through the carpenter shop and then amidships to the weld shop. No sooner had I got down the ladder when a bomb came through the carpenter shop hitting the ladder I had just come down. There were numerous casualties in the carpenter shop. One shipmate was decapitated. Immediately, I went to the weld shop. Half of the men there had been sleeping or were just awakening and were asking, "What's up?" The other men and I told them the Japs were here. I looked toward the small hatch opening that I had just come through to get to our shop. "Ski," a shipmate, had just come into the shop looking very pale and wobbly. We grabbed him and laid him on a cot, face-down, as we discovered that both cheeks of his backside were torn off and hardly any flesh remained. This was the result of the bomb that had come through the carpenter shop. In the meantime, another bomb hit the forward part of our ship on the starboard side near where I had been studying a few minutes earlier.

USS Arizona burning

Dad recalled that at about the time the second bomb hit the forward part of the Vestal, on the starboard side near where he had been studying a few minutes earlier, was when the Arizona exploded. While he was below decks at that moment, he did not then know what had happened, although it was a “shaking experience” for him. “When the Arizona blew up and was broken in two, my first thought from below deck was that our acetylene and oxygen cylinders, which were topside and near the great explosion, had blown up. Soon afterward, we learned that it was the Arizona. And, later on, with all of the burned survivors, we knew for sure what had happened.”

When the Arizona exploded, more than 100 sailors on the Vestal were blown overboard into the flaming, oil-covered water. Amazingly, of the 400 men on the Vestal, only 6 were lost, although many were seriously injured. Among the many deeds of brave men, the Vestal’s captain, Cassin Young, received the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions that day. Having been blown overboard himself, Young swam back to the ship and retook command, calling his men back to their battle stations. To prevent the loss of his ship, Commander Young ran Vestal aground on a coral reef at Aiea. Young became 1 of 15 men to receive the Medal of Honor for bravery in the attack.

The losses to the Arizona were horrific. More than 1,100 Sailors and Marines still lie entombed within its sunken hull. Over 50 Sailors lie within the submerged Utah.

While effecting her own repairs, Vestal's crewmen immediately went to work resurrecting the sunken fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Dad recounted his experience of this “date which will live in infamy” in his narrative, Pearl Harbor: As I Remember.

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A profound experience from my childhood was to personally meet Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese commander who led the first attack wave on Pearl Harbor, and who immortalized the words, Tora, Tora, Tora. When I was about 10, my dad insisted that I go with him to a Youth for Christ meeting in San Diego where this extraordinary man and former enemy of the United States was speaking. Years after the Pearl Harbor attack, Fuchida became a Christian in a remarkable conversion to Christ. I wrote about my experience in the post, Meeting God's Samurai.

Alongside the Arizona

My dad, Frank Dolan, remembered that his repair ship, the Vestal, moved alongside the USS Arizona on this date, a Friday in 1941, in preparation for work to begin the following Monday.

We tied up to her, portside to portside, meaning that the Arizona as well as all of the other battleships faced south, and we faced north. All of these huge battleships with 14-inch or 16-inch guns were a sight to behold. After our lines were tied, the weldors threw their welding ground leads over to the Arizona where they were clamped securely, ready for Monday.

Of course, the infamous Japanese attack on Sunday morning will change everyone's plans.

"Battleship Row" on December 7, 1941

Source: Frank L. Dolan's account

Happy Veterans Day, Dad!

My dad, a Pearl Harbor survivor, told us many inspiring and hair-raising stories about his WWII experiences. Over the years, I’ve tried to record as many of these as I could coax him to remember, many of which I'm blogging about here. I also decided to document his war service in manuscript. It was a delight to go back and forth with him in writing and editing over the past few years. Sadly, the work was still in process when he was taken from us last April. But even in his last weeks in the hospital he was still recalling interesting details.

The last tidbit about the war that I remember him relaying was, that while in Hawaii, probably in  1944, he and some buddies one day were pretending to hit a few balls around the golf course. They were taken by complete surprise when a U.S. Army general approached them. After introductions and making a few observations with the sailors, the general played on through their group. Dad had no idea at that moment who he was. A few months later, though, he and the rest of the world recognized General Douglas MacArthur famously wading onto the shore at Leyte in the Philippines declaring, "I have returned."

Source: Naval History & Heritage Museum

President Roosevelt had summoned Gen. MacArthur and Adm. Nimitz to meet with

him in Hawaii to make a decision about the next phase of action against Japan. Nimitz

made the case for attacking Formosa, while MacArthur stressed America's moral obli-

gation to liberate the Philippines. The meeting took place on board USS Baltimore at

Pearl Harbor, on July 26, 1944.

Scary things to do this Halloween

Vision Forum reminds us of what America is missing—fear—the fear of the Lord in particular.  "As a people, we no longer fear God.  Because we do not fear God, we no longer hate evil (Proverbs 8:13)."  The "Five Scariest Things You Can Do This Halloween" is a timely and worthwhile article to read today.

On the Passing of Steve Jobs

A thoughtful reflection by Doug Phillips (Vision Forum Ministries) on the Death of Steve Jobs

Liberty and State Education

Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. 

J. Gresham Machen (Christianity and Liberalism, 1923)

Daily Life at Pearl, 1941

At Pearl, before the war, we worked on ships that needed their portholes welded up, by taking out the old glass and inserting a circular metal plate that we welded in its place. This was done in case of war for the watertightness of ships and completed mostly on our World War I destroyers… Saturday was the usual ‘captains’ inspection,’ then liberty to Honolulu for those in the liberty section.

—Frank L. Dolan, USS Vestal, 1941

Two takes on 'Time'

Shakespeare on 'Time'

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,

Crooked elipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
(Sonnet #60)

The Apostle Paul on 'Time'

See then that you walk circumspectly,

not as fools, but as wise,

redeeming the time,

because the days are evil.

(Ephesians 5:15-16)

Logic, Latin, and a Whole Lot More

Across the country, there is an emerging movement of parents and teachers* that believes it is not enough only to provide the right subjects for their children. More than teaching basic skills and information, these folks are starting and staffing schools that focus on teaching comprehensive content and moral conviction—the kind of education we’d have to look back to our great-grandparents’ generation to find.

This is a central aim of classical educators today, to recover a method that is missing in modern schooling. Their classrooms include the fundamentals of phonics, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.  But these “classical” subjects are only the beginning. Students are also trained to use them as tools for self-learning.  Indeed, these “tools of learning” are as important as the “subjects” they teach.

Over 60 years ago, Oxford scholar and British novelist, Dorothy Sayers, wrote about the declining ability to think evidenced in her pre-World War II generation.  She addressed this topic in an essay called “The Lost Tools of Learning.” There she lamented the fact that while teachers were successful at teaching “subjects,” as a whole they were failing to train students how to think. “They learn everything except the art of learning,” she observed. Her solution? A return to the “medieval syllabus” where teaching doesn’t focus on subjects as much as it does on the methods of handling those subjects. In this approach, students are taught how to use the “tools of learning” before they begin to apply them to study of subjects in particular.

Modern education tends to focus mainly on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one’s conclusions to be learned more by accident, or at least incidental to the learning process. But Sayers points out that in the mediaeval model, teaching concentrated first on “forging and learning to handle the tools of learning,” using the subjects as material on which “to doodle until the use of the tool became second nature.” Teaching students how to acquire and use these tools is fundamental to learning any subject.

So a large part of what classical educators are doing is identifying age-appropriate tools for students so that they become life-long learners. The approach centers on the application of the trivium, the historical foundation for learning. The trivium has three parts or phases of learning that are adapted to three observable stages of childhood development:  grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Each of these phases focuses on the ways students learn best.

For example, grammar school students are taught through songs, rhythm, and repetition in order to help them develop memory and to store basic information for later use. Amazingly, this is also when they begin to master Latin, the foundation for English, and an important link to the student’s cultural roots and later learning.

Next, in the logic stage, teachers capitalize on the early adolescent’s ability to argue and draw conclusions. These mentally astute kids are taught formal logic, and their reasoning skills are sharpened through learning other advanced subjects, too.

High school is the rhetoric phase.  Students now are taught how to communicate with clarity and winsomeness at a point in their personal development when they are naturally concerned about personal appearance. Without this ability to communicate persuasively, the best ideas will go unheard.

Classical education is the legacy of Western Civilization. This method of learning was woven into the fabric of our own nation’s history. Leaders like Washington, Adams, and Jefferson—to name only a few—were products of classical training. Classical education has always provided a structured environment that also inspires students with a love for learning. While in earlier generations this approach trained the best American minds, it is being used again to develop thoughtful, articulate, and morally mature young people today.

Which leads to the final, but the most compelling component of classical education today: moral nurture. In the Western tradition, classical schooling was based on a foundation of morality. Timeless beliefs from the Scriptures were formulated into concrete values on which our greatest leaders once lived and labored. Today’s classical schools build a biblical and moral structure around which all other subjects are taught.

This, then, is modern classical education—so much more than mere subjects to be taught. In response to academic and moral decline in American schools today, this educational movement is returning to a time-tested method that worked for a thousand years until the modern age. These educators are successfully inspiring students to engage in their own learning long after the lights go out at the end of the school day.

*See, for example, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools: http://www.accsedu.org/

Moral Relativism & Education

Like several others C.S. Lewis’s books, The Abolition of Man is a collection of lectures delivered in 1943. These dealt mainly with what Lewis perceived to be the dangers of moral relativism, a destructive modern worldview. He believed that our universe existed in such a way “that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it… that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, or reverence, or our contempt.”  This idea has profound implications for teachers.

The importance of education lies in cultivating the right attitude towards this a universal law, which Lewis called the Tao.  For some, the term is an unfortunate choice.  However, by choosing this word, Lewis was simply naming a universal moral law, which previous generations of all cultures had recognized to one degree or another. Until our age, societies typically lived and functioned within the limits of the moral law. What distinguishes our present generation is the denial of the Tao, thereby cutting itself off from its moral heritage. Educators share in the blame. Lewis particularly noticed this trend in student textbooks, the very means of handing off moral and cultural heritage from one generation to another.  He feared that the new thinkers writing these books would wield the power to “condition” succeeding generations.

Progressive education sounds innocuous and maybe even beneficial.  After all, who wants to resist progress? However, the progress that Lewis identified represented power:  power over nature, even human nature. “Each new power won by man,” he warned, “is a power over man as well.” He knew that those with the power to condition others’ thoughts, too, even to alter societal values.

The only remedy is to embrace objective standards and to apply these with emotional and intellectual conviction. Students must learn proper responses, “to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful,” says Lewis. He goes on to demonstrate that when properly trained in the Tao, students have a means to shaping Christian behavior, but that’s another book, or rather Book 3 of his Mere Christianity.