[ PEARL HARBOR / FADING VOICES ]

BRETT SEYMOUR / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE { 7 } Illumination of the Admiral's Cabin on the Arizona's second desk reveals the remains of a large table, an overturned chair encased in sediment and a light fixture with an intact light bulb.

Deadly blast,
watery grave

A Japanese bomb set off 250 tons of stored
ammunition, generating a cataclysmic
explosion that ripped open the bow of
the USS Arizona and instantly ended
the lives of more than 1,100 men

---

By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com

Not many survived of the USS Arizona's crew, when the big battleship burst open in white-hot flame, cracked wide and sank in minutes. Most in the ship's bow were vaporized. Others were burned, torn apart, shattered internally or drowned. Survivors of the Arizona's crew are only a few dozen today, and most were in the aft part of the ship, sheltered in the massive gun turrets or high in the aft tripod. Some were simply picked up by the concussion and hurled off the ship.

Thanks largely to interviews conducted by Joy Waldron Jasper and collected in the new book "The USS Arizona," coauthored by James Delgado and Jim Adams, plus other sources, here's how the survivors remember the event, told in their own fading voices.

BRETT SEYMOUR / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE { 5 } A hatch cover on the Arizona remains intact despite the collapsed and compressed decks below, a result of the forward magazine explosion.

Gun pointer Jim Lawson was settling in with the Sunday comics and a cup of coffee when he heard a mysterious thump. "After a couple more of those thumps, I looked out the porthole just in time to see the airplane drop a torpedo into the battleship ahead of us. I think it was the California. I could see the red meatballs on the wings."

"I saw a deck messenger running down the steps to the captain's quarters," said gunner's mate Jim Burcham. "He ignored the Marine sentry and just started banging on the door. You just don't do that -- you just don't ignore the sentry!"

"The captain came running out and went up on deck. I went topside too, and I could see smoke on the island."

"The newspaper went one way, the coffee went the other and I went out the hatch," where Lawson grabbed an ax to chop ropes tying the tender alongside. "To this day I do not know how, I don't remember getting the ax, but I cut the Vestal loose," said Lawson. "In a month of Sundays you couldn't break those hawsers with the blow of an ax, but I did it. It took me 15 seconds."

LARRY MURPHY / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE { 6 } Located in the galley area, a broken ceramic bowl and a fork lie in the sediment where they fell during the Arizona's sinking.

"There were a lot of explosions, and they were causing rivets to pop out of the metal" said gunner's mate John Rampley. "Bolts were flying through the air."

Rampley leaped into his battle station and attempted to contact the bridge, but received only silence from the fire-control center. He didn't know it had already been destroyed.

"I was scared to death. There was no communications at all ... there were a lot of explosions. The worst part was you couldn't see anything."

"I got my headphones and put them on," said gun pointer William Goshen, "but I couldn't unlock the ammunition hoist because I didn't have the key, the boatswain's mate had it. And I was the only one on the gun at the time of the raid. Maybe some of them didn't make it to battle stations because they were already dead by the time general quarters sounded."

Admiral Kidd paused for a moment to talk to gun pointer James Foster. "He said, 'Man your battle station, son,' and hit me on the shoulder. I think he called me son. I don't know why. Man your battle station -- one man on a 16-man gun!"

One Japanese bomb scored an extraordinarily lucky hit, passing through the deck and exploding among stored ammunition below. The subsequent secondary explosion rocked the entire harbor and ripped off the battleship's bow.

"As far back as we were from the explosion," it knocked us down," said Lawson. "The lights went out, and the emergency light came on in about ten seconds. Inside the lower handling room of thge turret we had four battle lanterns, battery-operated electric lanterns. We put those on. As soon as I got up I realized we'd been hit real bad, but I figured we'd get under way."

"The ship shook like an earthquake," said sight setter Don Stratton. "The bomb hit aft of number two turret on the starboard side, down into the fuel, ammunition and aviation gasoline, it went off and just engulfed the whole foremast."

BRETT SEYMOUR / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE { 8 } Stairs that once led to the Captain's Cabin is now blocked by marine growth and sediment, which fills many of Arizona's passageways and cabins.

"We were topside at the gun when the main explosion went off," said Burcham. "I don't know how many thousands of pounds the gun turret weighed, but the blast just lifted that turret up -- and then set it down."

Goshen was on the ship one moment, in the water the next. "The only way I could figure it out was that I had been blown off. I looked up at the ship and I knew there was no need going back there. I looked up at the boats, and they were all on fire. The Arizona was on fire. I heard the buzzing of planes, the cracking of cannnons, the machine guns they were strafing with."

"We were getting burnt something terrible," said Stratton. "Hair burned off, skin on arms slipping off like big socks, pulled it off them and threw it down out of the way."

"I remember that I was madder than hell," said Burcham. "There were divebombvers and strafers. I bet this one plane wasn't 50 feet high. I don't think it was clear of our tripod mast, and that's 75 to 100 feet. You could see their faces. It looked like they were laughing!"

BRETT SEYMOUR / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE { 9 } Underwater archeologist Matt Russell of the National Park Service collects an escaping oil drop near the Arizona's galley. The NPS estimates that the ship has leaked about one quart a day for nearly 60 years.

"It was just a few minutes when the people down in the lower handling room, where the powder magazines were, started yelling, "We're hitting water and it's coming pretty fast!'" recalled Lawson. "We didn't have any power or any communications whatsoever with the rest of the ship, so we had no idea what condition she was in. The guys there in the lower handling room kept getting water, water up to their knees, water up to their waist. Pretty soon it was up to their chins."

Water mixed with wet-cell batteries, releasing chlorine that lay like gassy scum over the rising water, choking the dazed sailors.

"the fumes were so bad I was sitting there in the pointers chair with a t-shirt over my nose, saying, what do we do next?" said Lawson. "The division officer was absolutely worthless -- he didn't know what to do either. We had no coimmunication with the bridge, we couldn't ask anyone what was going on. We were just sitting there in limbo. We knew we'd been hit bad."

Navigating the Arizona The numbers of the photographs on these pages correspond to the numbers on the Arizona map above.

Bailing out of the turret, "then and only then could we see that she was sitting in the water, broken right in half," said Lawson. "And she was on fire past that second mast, the tripod mast. The fire was licking the forward wall of the barbette of Turret Three, and those guys were dropping through the fire to get to the deck."

"When I came out of the turret onto the deck, I couldn't believe the scene," said Rampley. "The decks were on fire and covered in oil. I remember as I got to the bottom of the ladder that I didn't want to step in that oil. I waited there until someone stepped on my hand."

Oil gushed into the water around the ship and burned fitfully.

"It was deep and there was an awful lot of it," said Lawson. "Rafts immediately started drifting and floating into the burning oil ... I saw what was happening, and I was still trying to get the last (raft) into the water with another couple of guys. We cut them down , threw them into the water and jumped in. The guys who actually got onto one were going right into the fire, so they had to get off immediately."

Anderson found his officer "dead on deck, his back split open like a watermelon," and jumped in the water, where he saw the ship's cook. "I don't know how he got blown out of the galley to the outside. He was dead, with a kitchen knife stuck in him from the force of the explosion."

"I got off before the magazines exploded, before the Arizona blw, and I got a ride on the Admiral's barge over to Ford Island," said machine gunner Vernon OIsen. "They strafed us all the way going over, from where the ship was tied up all the way to Ford Island. The Japs strafed the motor launches."

Foster felt seawater lance at his charred legs went he jumped in. "When I came up, I was gagging ... I was really busting water tryinng to get away from that thing before it blew up. I wasn't a very good swimmer, but I really busted water for about ten foot and reralized I was give out. I was give plum out. I used my last strength to get over on my back and paddled the rest of the way, but I had a heck of a time getting over to the island. They planes were still coming in, and they were strafing all the men in the water.

USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL COLLECTION, NPS A life ring from the Arizona's No. 2 motor launch was recovered shortly after the ship's sinking by Art Heley, an inspector for underwater construction for the Bureau of Yards and Docks.

"That's the first time I saw the planes, when I got on my back. They strafed right close to me. And that's the first other men I saw. When I got in the water I saw some men there on the quay you tie a ship up to. They were just hanging on to that thing, and I was struggling to get to Ford Island."

"I was the second to last man off the ship," said Lawson. Lt. Samuel Fuqua, the senior surviving officer, was "the last guy. He went down to the boat boom and got down into the barge. I was trying to take this scared sailor in what I could musetr as some kind of a a swimmer's carry. I was making no progress, just treading water with him, and the breeze and current were taking us into the fire. I went ahead ... and let him go."

Luckily, Fuqua got the barge running and tossed Lawson a T-shirt as he motored by, and Lawson tied the shirt to his foot. The other sailor hung on to the shirt as Lawson paddled for shore.

"The boats were too slow for me so I started swimming," said Rampley. "In the water I saw a Texan from the 4th Division. He comes swimming by me like I was standing still, passed me and said, "How ya doin', kid?'"

USS ARIZONA MEMORIAL COLLECTION, NPS Commissioning pennant recovered after the Arizona was sunk. It had flown from the fore mast.

Burned over 70 percent of his body, Gosen was still smouldering when he got ashore. "Somebody came by with a bottle of vinegar and poured it over my head. Evidentally that killed a lot of the fire. When you're in shock, nothing hurts."

"There was a guy standing on the dock ... how he got there, I don't know," said Lawson. "He looked like he had just gotten off the grill. He was burned to a crisp. The poor guy. What kept him alive, I don't know. He kept asking for help and no one could help. What could you do?"

In those few moments, 1,177 sailors and Marines had perished on the USS Arizona.

Special thanks The National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center and the USS Arizona Memorial Association graciously provided the underwater images and artifacts, respectively, that appear throughout this special section. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is grateful for their assistance.