Posted on 11/15/2019 2:09:27 PM PST by fugazi
When the battleship USS Oklahoma turned over just 15 minutes after being hit by the first Japanese torpedo on 7 December 1941, 429 sailors and Marines were either already dead -- or soon would be. Men that somehow survived the initial nightmare of torpedoes, bombs, shrapnel, bullets, and fire had to swim through another level of hell to reach the relative safety of land. Those that remained inside the flooding ship would spend days in pitch-black darkness with no food, water, and what breathable air they had was being slowly used up while they hoped for rescue.
78 years later, we can't possibly comprehend what those men endured that day. For a few sailors, however, they were concerned not only with their own welfare, but with that of their brothers as well: Among the battleship's crew of 1,300 were eight sets of brothers. Here are their stories.
20-year-old Charles Casto and his 19-year-old brother Richard, of East Liverpool, Ohio both perished. Richard's body was found and buried after the attacks at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, but Charles was interred among hundreds of other USS Oklahoma unknown sailors and Marines. In 2017 the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified Charles' remains, which had been buried with other unknowns in a group grave, and reinterred him alongside his brother.
Seaman 1st Class Kirby R. Stapleton (24, of Chillicothe, Mo.) was trapped below decks when the torpedoes tore open the battleship. His brother Delbert was topside and survived. Kirby's remains were identified in 2018 and buried alongside Delbert, who passed away in 2001, at the Riverside (Calif.) National Cemetery.
The Blitz Twins -- Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Leo and Fireman 1st Class Rudolph -- had joined the Navy at 17 and nearing the end of
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
“Just imagine if someone created a “Pearl Harbor Experience” virtual reality video where you witnessed a recreation of what a sailor experienced”
You kidding? Today, if a VR video was “produced”, it would focus on the segregated U.S. Military, on the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and any other “American Evil” every American youngster has been brainwashed into believing since 1970.
And also bring up poor ol’ grannie Japan where the hated Americans just beat her up.
I grew up in the 1950's. Most of my peer's dads were WW2 and/or Korean war vets.
It never dawned on my until recently that a fair share of them probably had some form of PTSD.
Maybe that's why so many - including my dad who was a green Navy doc in WW2 and 4 years later at Chosin Korea - never talked about their service?
Actually, could have been like my Dad, “it's just what we had to do, besides, we came back. The ones that didn't come back are who we should talk about.”
I never heard a single war story from him except the times he met up with old buddies and I eavesdropped.
The movie “Midway” has some great scenes of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Since they used CGI they were really good.
I was told that after the war in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia families and friends would gather on Sunday after church. After the meal was finished the men would sit on the porch relaxing and talking. The windows would be open for ventilation. After the women finished the dishes they would sit quietly in the living room listening to their husbands and fathers on the porch. That was the only way the women learned what the men went through as the men didn’t want to burden the women with the sadness.
I read about the three Barber brothers perishing on the Oklahoma. Shouldn’t the War Dept had taken the hint about preventing brothers serving on the same ship or same infantry division? Especially what happened to the Sullivans later on the USS Juneau.
IIRC during Vietnam, the Army wouldn’t allow brothers to serve in-country at the same time.
The Sullivan Brothers Rule. Every service had their own version, modified over time for different conflicts. Basis for the story, Finding Private Ryan. I think that in Vietnam, brothers couldn’t be assigned to the same division.
Oops, Saving Private Ryan
In 1941 that would have been the The Department of the Navy, The Department of War ran the Army.
I just double-checked: Of 37 sets of brothers, 23 sets were lost. (There were 79 original brothers, of whom 63 were killed.)
When they did have it and we knew it we just called it the shakes. It was clear for some. They never were what we called normal. Many others endured and functioned as best they could but manned up and carried on.
Even the loss of the Sullivan brothers didn’t take place in a vacuum; the officers on the USS Juneau had been warning them about the danger all of them faced being on the same ship.
As I typesetter, I worked for a small farm magazine in Missouri in the mid-50s. One of the ladies came in late one day and someone asked "Jim again?". She said "Yes, he woke up crying again." Evidently this was not an unusual occurance.
Later on I found that "Jim" served on one of those rocket launcher ships and his job was to remove the duds after a salvo went off. I thought of the EOD guys disarming a bomb, as sometimes (I was told) the rocket went off when you were pulling it off the spigot. Talk about MAJOR stress.
Never even imagined duds since they just went off in salvos.
I never thought of that either. Some guys lost both hands and face when they ignited as they were being unloaded. You'd think they'd just leave the damned thing on when they reloaded the next salvo and figure it might go the second or third time.
I don't know how they worked but would think via electric ignition. If so, why not knock out the power first? Maybe like a dud firecracker, slow-burning fuse.
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