GREGG K. KAKESAKO / GKAKESAKO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Alex Bussell, Charles Everett Bussell, Woodrow Wilson Derby and Charles Lloyd Bussell trade stories during a visit to the USS Arizona Visitor Center last week.
Pearl Harbor hero
returns at the behest
of his son
Whenever Charles Lloyd Bussell tried to talk to his father about the Pearl Harbor attack, his response was always: "No, there's too many bad memories there."
So for the past 62 years Boatswain's Mate 1st Class Charles Everett Bussell never contemplated a trip to the islands and a visit to Pearl Harbor and the place where, on Dec. 7, 1941, 50 of his shipmates on the battleship USS Nevada were killed and another 109 wounded.
"I had no desire to come back," said Everett Bussell, 83. "There are too many painful memories."
But his son, who as a member of the U.S. Customs Service (now the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Protection) had made numerous trips to the islands over the past 31 years, wanted his dad to see the USS Arizona Memorial and attend a Dec. 7 Pearl Harbor service.
"I wanted to honor all those men who didn't survive," said Lloyd Bussell. This year he finally got his dad, a retired U.S. Postal Service machinist who lives in Nine Mile Falls, Wash., to make the trip.
This morning Everett Bussell and his family will motor out to the alabaster memorial, which spans the battleship USS Arizona, to stand with other survivors and local military and civilian leaders as they pay tribute to 2,405 military personnel and civilians killed that day during the Japanese raid.
"I promised him that we would play some golf," Lloyd Bussell said, "attend the Pearl Harbor services together on Sunday the seventh, and generally have a good time. I also promised him that we'd take his grandson, my son, Alex, who is 14 years old and thinks his grandpa is a hero, and I agree."
Everett Bussell enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Jan. 9, 1939, when he was 19 because "there was nothing to keep me in Montana."
He served on the 583-foot battleship from 1939 to 1944 -- a period that included the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific and European campaigns and the Normandy invasion.
"On the morning of Dec. 7, I had just come off duty," Everett Bussell said, "and was preparing to get some sleep when I heard a loud noise that sounded like someone chipping paint of the ship's hull using a jack hammer.
"That made me look out a nearby porthole to see what the heck was going on and that's when I saw that the USS Arizona, she was anchored adjacent to the Nevada in battleship row, was taking heavy fire and was just beginning to sink.
"My battle station was the No. 2 14-inch gun turret. However, I was immediately assigned to one of the damage control crews who were trying to put out fires, repair damage and just generally trying to keep the Nevada afloat."
The Nevada was moored alone off of Ford Island and as gunners opened fire, the ship's engineers were able to get up steam. "At that time I guess we were able to raise about 15 to 20 percent of her power," Everett Bussell said.
Even as the battleship was able to get underway, the Nevada was struck by one torpedo and two or three Japanese bombs. Unable to make it through the Pearl Harbor channel to sea, the ship's skipper decided to beach the 27,000 ton warship at Hospital Point rather than let it sink, blocking the entrance to the harbor.
Everett Bussell said he spent most of the day piloting a motor launch, ferrying dead and wounded sailors to Hospital Point.
"At one point I was ordered down into the ship to help remove bodies that had been bagged. That's why I never returned."
The Nevada was refloated on Feb. 12, 1942, and repaired at Pearl Harbor Naval Yard and Puget Sound Navy Yard before it was sent to Alaska to provide fire support for the capture of Attu three months later. After further modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard, the Nevada was sent to Europe, where its guns pounded the German shore defense on the Cherbourg Peninsula in June 1944.
The battleship returned to the Pacific where it assisted with the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. Though damaged by a suicide plane on March 27, 1945, and by an artillery shell on April 5, 1945, Nevada remained in action off Okinawa until June 1945.
Last week while Everett Bussell, his son and grandson were visiting the USS Arizona Visitor Center, they bumped into a fellow Nevada shipmate, Woodrow Wilson Derby, who has been representing the battleship at each Pearl Harbor memorial service for the past eight years. Neither sailor had ever met each other until last week. It was Bussell's ball cap with USS Nevada embroidered on it that caught Derby's attention.
Currently, the president of the USS Nevada Reunion Association, Derby, 85, said there are at least 455 former Nevada crew members who belong to his organization and recommended Bussell to become a member. "I'm glad to be here," Derby said. "I am glad that I am still able to come here."
