December 7th

I’m not quite through with the Oscar Hoback stories but since today is December 7th and those of us with some age on us remember what that means… I’m posting an article from the NAPA (California) Register, dated December 7, 1977. It was written by Fred Moore, a Pacific Union College journalism student. Art Smith was Vernon’s uncle.

As a retired chief warrant officer in the U.S. Navy, with 24 years service, Pacific Union College electrical foreman Art Smith holds recollections that few men can share.

Among those memories is the experience he had while stationed in Hawaii in December of 1941. Stationed on the U.S.S. California, docked in Pearl Harbor, Smith recalls a day’s events.

For Radio Man First Class Art Smith, Sunday, December 7, was to be a day of relaxation. At about 7 am, dressed in the uniform of the day – white cut-offs and a t-shirt – Smith headed for breakfast with his mates.

New “household words” like “Blitzkrieg,” “Nazis” and “Hitler,” punctuated the talks around the breakfast tables that morning.

But the men spoke of the war as something distant. In actuality, the war was thousands of miles away from the Hawaiian Islands. Why, the men assured themselves, even the closest possible enemy, Japan, is some 4,000 miles away. War was not expected to reach the islands that have one outstanding protection – remoteness.

With the morning sports page tucked under his arm, Smith left the breakfast discussions for the quiet of the radio room. Just as he was getting engrossed in the efforts of his favorite team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, as reported in the sports page of the Honolulu Advertiser, one of his mates burst into the room.

”I hadn’t been there too long when one of my buddies came running down the hatch into the radio room and said, ‘Someone’s bombing Ford Island.’ I couldn’t take it seriously. The war was in Europe; my thinking was geared to that. I figured that the Army was trying to scare the Navy by dropping sandbags over there,” Smith recalls.

”I sort of left my newspaper and was looking at the overhead of the radio room. I was thinking about the sandbags, when about that time, the first torpedo hit the ship. Sounded like a pretty good ‘sandbag’ to me.

”The thing I happened to be looking at in the ceiling of that ship is still a vivid picture in my mind, reminisces Smith. It was a big I-beam, about 14” wide. I saw that I-beam buckle about four or five inches, and the paint crackle off, from the force of the torpedo hit.”

The radio room of the California was set just under the protective deck. This deck was six to eight inches of solid steel. There was a hatch that came down through the deck that had to be opened and shut mechanically. It was far too heavy to move by hand.

”When the torpedo hit, the hatch was sprung so it couldn’t be closed. We were called to battle stations when the torpedo hit. Normally, the hatches are automatically closed during battle stations. It wasn’t but a few moments when the water and oil began pouring through the hatch opening. We had lost power, leaving the radio room in darkness. The engine room was pretty well flooded by this time,” the former radio officer explains.

When they received an order to abandon the radio room, Smith and his crew began working their way to the deck. As they crawled and scrambled through the wreckage, Smith found the going worsened by the ship’s increasing list.

”It seemed like we were going to turn right over. We had received three torpedo hits by this time. Counterflooding righted us pretty quickly, though, and the ship settled down into the mud.”

Assembled on a higher deck, Smith and his mates awaited instructions. With the torpedo runs over, the Japanese fighters began their bombing runs. When the first bomb hit the California, the radio officer found himself hanging from a pipe overhead, with what look like a gaping abyss beneath him.

To be continued…

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