Remembering December 7th, 1941 and Pearl Harbor - A Family Story
Robert McMahon, Sports Columnist
Remembering December 7th, 1941 and Pearl Harbor - A Family Story
The late Herbert “Bud” Kennedy, my father-in-law, was the father of my wife Pam Kennedy and the only grandfather of our children. He was a career US Navy man and I knew that he had been on a ship at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked on December 7, 1941 by Japanese airplanes. But Bud never talked about that experience to his 8 children or to me, even after I served in the US Navy after college. In 1997, a year before he died, he decided to tell his family members about his Pearl Harbor experience in an unusual way—he agreed to appear on the History Channel on a segment about great escapes. I have since done some research on his rescue to write a more complete narrative about it for the Kennedy family and for our children. The following is a brief synopsis from this narrative.
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Bud got up early at 0600 on the Oklahoma on Sunday, December 7, 1941. He had breakfast in the mess hall and attended Mass on the ship’s deck at 0700, while it was tied up next to the USS Maryland. He decided to go back to his bunk in the Aft Steering Compartment and do some reading for a while before doing some sightseeing in Honolulu later in the day.
At 0752 an explosion rocked Bud and his seven other shipmates out of their bunks. Their compartment was located 3 decks below the main deck and at first Bud thought there had been a boiler explosion on the Oklahoma. Soon, there were eight other explosions, all torpedoes hitting the Oklahoma. A call by the Officer of the Deck over the intercom for everyone to man their General Quarters battle stations soon made Bud realize that the Oklahoma was under attack.
In a dizzying 30 minutes, the ship listed and turned over 140 degrees with just the hull of the ship above water. Bud’s compartment, Aft Steering, began to flood with seawater and oil from the harbor flowing into the fresh air ducts now located below them. They quickly stuffed the fresh air registers with mattresses and clothing to keep the water level at 3 feet. As the compartment was now upside down, Bud and his shipmates managed to find perches on the hull bottom, the new ceiling. Soon the lights in the compartment went out. Two flashlights were found to provide some light before the batteries died. For the next several hours, they heard nothing and saw nothing as they hung to their perches dressed in just their skivvies with the air in the compartment growing staler and staler.
Later in the afternoon, they heard the sound of motor launches above them in the harbor passing by the Oklahoma. For the first time, they realized that there were survivors and activity outside of their ship. They located a dog wrench, a large wrench used to “batten down the hatches” and began pounding the hull above them. Each of the eight sailors in Aft Steering took a 30-minute shift pounding the hull hoping that someone outside of the ship would hear them. Finally, about 1930 (7:30 pm), almost 12 hours after the Oklahoma was torpedoed, they heard men using pneumatic air chippers trying to make holes in the ship’s hull to rescue survivors. Bud later learned that shipyard workers first used acetylene torches to cut holes in one area of the Oklahoma’s hull, but the torches set insulation on fire and suffocated the men in that compartment.
As the night progressed, they realized that the workers trying to cut holes in the hull were a great distance from their compartment. They continued to pound the hull throughout the night to make sure that they were not forgotten. And they continued to maintain hope even when it became clear to them that it was now Monday morning. Finally, at 1600 (4 PM) on Monday, the rescuers broke a hole through the hull in their compartment and called out to them. The hole was barely big enough to fit a slim sailor, but the rescuers were able to pull out all eight sailors. While Bud stood on the hull looking out in the daylight 36 hours after being trapped in the Oklahoma, only then did he realize the scope of the attack as he saw damaged and sunken ships everywhere, many of them still on fire.
About 1,200 of the Oklahoma’s crew was on board when the ship was torpedoed Sunday morning. The other 800 or so crew members were in Honolulu enjoying liberty. Two-thirds of the Oklahoma’s crew managed to escape before the ship capsized. About 450 sailors were trapped in the ship below the water line when it rolled over. Only Bud Kennedy and his 7 shipmates and 24 others—a total of 32 sailors--in other compartments were rescued. Continued efforts to reach the other 418 proved fruitless and too dangerous to pursue. The remains of those 418 sailors were only removed in 1943 when the ship was righted. All the remains, just bones, were put into 61 caskets and interred in Hawaii with several individuals mingled in each casket. In 2015 all 61 caskets were dug up to be analyzed using new DNA technology and forensic anthropologists. With advances in DNA technology, the remains of about 400 have been identified and sent home to families.
Bud Kennedy later saw action in World War II in the Aleutians aboard a sub-chaser. In 1946, he married Kathleen Cope and they enjoyed eight children. Kathleen passed at the age of 99 in November 2022. Bud spent 24 years in the Navy, earned a college degree in aeronautical engineering, became an accomplished aviator landing on aircraft carriers, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He retired in 1964 while stationed on the USS Essex at Quonset Point.