The Kitsap Sun Special Issue, “Survivors Remember Pearl Harbor”
printed May 27, 2001
Residence: Port Orchard, Washington
Age on Dec. 7, 1941: 21
Rank: Seaman first class
Where he was when the bombing started: In a whale boat tied up at Ford Island near the battleship USS Maryland.
“I got out there, and I couldn’t believe it. It was all just fire and black smoke everywhere.” It was early on a beautiful Sunday morning, perfect time for a little rowing exercise. Fleet Hamby and eight shipmates climbed aboard a Navy whale boat, the kind battleship crews used for recreational rowing competitions. It was tied up next to their battleship, USS Maryland. They were just settling in when the Japanese planes were spotted.
“The first planes we saw came right over the ship, and they looked like dive bombers,” he said. “I saw them as plain as I can see you sitting there. But it didn’t come to me. Probably the youngest boy of our group finally said, ‘I don’t think those are our planes.’ “Hamby and his shipmates saw a black bomb drop, headed for seaplane hangars. Still, they thought it might be a water bomb, the kind often used in training exercises.
“Then we saw the explosion and the fire, and we thought, ‘Oh hell!’ ”
At the same time a Japanese torpedo plane flew over the channel, attacking Battleship Row, and then the strafing started. Had the attack come a few minutes later, the whale boat crew would already have pulled into the harbor and likely been shot to pieces. But the sailors hadn’t even had time to untie the boat from the quay. They leapt out of the whale boat and raced up the Jacobs Ladder, two abreast, to the Maryland, Hamby said. He headed for his battle station in turret number two, one of the 16-inch turrets.
“Habit is a strong thing,” he said. “I raced across the port side, instead of the starboard side where I’d have been sheltered behind turret one and turret two. There were splinters flying and bullets hitting the armor.” Hamby ran into turret two, waking some sailors who had been trying to sleep late on the loading platform. “I was falling over some of them, hollering, getting them up,” he said. A sailor writing a letter up in the superstructure, next to a 50-caliber machine gun, immediately threw down his pencil, grabbed some ammo and began firing, Hamby recalled.
“He got a plane, but whether or not it was the first one, nobody knows,” he said. “It was chaos.” He was in his battle station, as he was supposed to be, but the 16-inch guns were of no use in such an attack.”We couldn’t do anything. We just heard wild reports.” He and another sailor were sent out to remove canvas from the guns. “I got out there, and I couldn’t believe it. It was all just fire and black smoke everywhere.”
Ultimately the crew managed to fire all its anti-aircraft batteries. The battleship USS Oklahoma, moored next to the Maryland, had been badly hit and turned over; sailors had to cut ropes tying the two ships together so the Maryland wouldn’t be turned over, as well. During the attack, “I wasn’t as scared as I was later,” Hamby said. “That night, we were in such a state of confusion and at about 10 p.m. we heard some planes coming in. I thought, ‘Man, this is it.’ I was thinking, ‘Boy, if I could just get a rifle and get to a beach somewhere and do what I could.’ But they turned out to be our planes.” The next day, Hamby was assigned to help fight fires on the USS West Virginia, which was sunk in the attack but later raised and repaired. He’s still haunted by what happened to sailors on the Oklahoma, trapped inside when the ship turned over. “The Oklahoma was sticking up, oh, 8 or 10 feet, and they couldn’t use torches so they used air guns to cut into the bottom of the ship,” he said. “They heard this ‘tap, tap,’ and it seems like it was three or four days later, managed to get some of them out alive.” The Maryland itself was hit by two bombs, suffering moderate damage. Hamby remained aboard the battleship for the duration of the war, and the Pearl Harbor bombing was only a taste of what was to come. The “Fighting Mary” participated in several key battles, including assaults on Tarawa in November 1943 and Saipan in June 1944, the initial landings in the Philippines and the battle for Leyte Gulf in October 1944.
During the Pearl Harbor attack the Maryland (BB-46) was inboard of the capsized Oklahoma (BB-37) on Battleship row and so escaped torpedo damage. The West Virginia (BB-48) burns in the background. Official
Between 1944 and 1945, the Maryland was twice hit by Kamikaze suicide attacks, something Hamby said was more terrifying than the Pearl Harbor attack itself. “They killed a lot of people,” he said. Among them, a friend of his who had helped him remove canvas from the Maryland guns while the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. The Maryland earned seven battle stars during the war.
Fleet is a registered honoree with the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.