USS Pennsylvania Ready to Blow
"There ain't no way I'm gonna go down there," sixteen year old John Garcia told the naval officer who ordered him to go aboard the burning USS Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania was only one of many United States naval ships that met with destruction when, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands.
Garcia knew that the Pennsylvania could blow up any minute. As he related later, he was young and sixteen, but he wasn't stupid, "not at sixty-two cents an hour." But John was still willing to help otherwise.
Bodies in the Water, Dead or Alive
Another officer asked him to go into the water and help pull sailors out that had been blown off the ship. This Garcia was willing to do.
Some of the men he and the others pulled out of the water were conscious. A lot of them were just dead. John and some other Hawaiians spent the rest of that awful day swimming inside the harbor, pulling bodies out of the water no matter their mortal state.
The West Virginia Turned Turtle
The next morning John Garcia was still helping in any way he could. He took his toolbox and went to where the West Virginia floated. In Garcia's words, this ship had "turned turtle." In other words, the West Virginia was totally upside down. They found a lot of men inside it. The other ships around it were in no better, often worse, condition.
The Arizona "was a total washout." The same was true for the Utah. There were men, also, trapped in the Utah.
As hard as it must have been for a sixteen year old boy to see and live through, much less keep working to help other, John Garcia had yet to experience a very terrible personal loss due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
A Hawaiian Boy Becomes a Man: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 continues with Hawaii: Sorrow's Island: Death and Destruction at Pearl Harbor.
Previous: A Hawaiian Boy Becomes a Man: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Recommended Reading:
The United States and Cuba: The Case of the Misadvised Advisors
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Attack by Air or Sea.
The Bay of Pigs: United States Prepares For a Takeover.
