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| James Watson, 93, of South Portland, recalls the moment when a Japanese torpedo bomber lined up on his ship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, only to be destroyed at the last moment by American fire. |
SOUTH PORTLAND — The vision above deck was
one of pure pandemonium. As flames shot skyward and roiling clouds of dark,
acrid smoke bubbled up in chase, men scrambled, shouted and pointed at enemy
planes buzzing low overhead, while, only a few hundred feet away, bodies bobbed
in the water where the U.S.S. Arizona lolled on its side, about to go down with
1,177 souls aboard.
As he shot to his station
on the Brooklyn-class light cruiser U.S.S. Phoenix, James Watson watched as one
plane, probably a Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bomber, one of 40 “Kate” planes in the
first wave, banked and bore down on his ship, its Type 91 torpedo specially
designed for the shallow waters of the Hawaiian harbor. Because the Japanese
pilots had been told not to waste their weapons, many made two and even three
runs before choosing a target. The one who selected the Phoenix, says Watson,
was lined up perfectly for a kill shot.
“He
had us dead,” he said. “We were going to be wiped out. He was only about 50
feet off the water, coming straight at us.”
But
then, a miracle happened.
“One
of the destroyers nearby – his heavy-caliber machine gun obviously hit its
torpedo, because, all of a sudden, he just went up in a big ball of flame,”
said Watson, still seemingly in disbelief all these years later at his close
call. “I tell you,” he said, “I saw that exact thing happen.”
But although he was present
at a seminal moment in history, all soldiers, and all sailors, have their
stories, said Watson, 93, who now lives at the Betsy Ross House in South
Portland. Each one, he stresses, contributed in some way to the preservation of
liberty. Still, there’s no denying that Watson is one of a dying breed. When
local residents gather along Broadway Monday for the annual Veterans Day
parade, perhaps as few as 20 or 30 participants, according to South Portland
VFW spokesman Sam Flint, will represent the “Greatest Generation.”
Last year, on Dec. 31, the
Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, of which Watson was a card-carrying member,
officially disbanded, citing the increasing inability of its aging membership
to fill leadership roles. At the time, association president William
H. Muehleib noted that from 28,000 servicemen who founded the group in 1958,
fewer than 2,700 survived, as of Sept. 1, 2011. In all, about 84,000 military
men and woman were stationed in and around the island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941,
when the Pearl Harbor attack ushered the U.S. into World War II. The
association estimated that around 8,000 of them were still alive when it
folded. But, with even the youngest of them in their late 80s, it’s only a
matter of time before they are all gone. Flint says he’s aware of just one
Pearl Harbor survivor on the roster of his VFW post, not counting Watson, who
has often visited but not formally joined the group.
Watson can still recall
vividly that morning, nearly 71 years ago, on that “date which will live in
infamy.”
One
of a handful of sailors on board when the first wave of a surprise attack came
in low over Ford Island, in the middle of Pearl Harbor. As the Japanese planes
descended on “Battleship Row,” Watson rushed to his post, helping to return
fire from the ship’s 5-inch secondary anti-aircraft battery and 50-caliber
machine guns.
“I was just sitting down to
read the morning newspaper when we heard, ‘This is not a drill, not a drill,
not a drill,’ repeated many times,” Watson, 93, recalled on the week before
Veterans Day, from the library of the Betsy Ross home in South Portland, where
he’s lived for the past six years. “Then I felt the vibrations of a torpedo
hitting one of the other ships and I thought, well, I think I better get
topside."
Then came the close call
with the Japanese bomber. The Phoenix ultimately escaped the carnage, hit only
by a single ricocheting 50-caliber round, presumably from an American gun. The
only real damage done was to one 6-inch gun, when a shell burst inside the
barrel, causing it, said Watson, to “swell up like a pair of old-fashioned
lady’s bloomers.”
Even with that issue, the
Phoenix was able to join a hastily convened task force sent in search of the
enemy armada. No contact was made and the ship spent the next month on convoy
duty between Hawaii and the mainland, before eventually steaming to join the
U.S. fleet in the South Pacific. During his time on the Phoenix through 1944,
Watson says, only two crewmen were lost, both hit by shrapnel from enemy fire.
“As a ship, we were very,
very, very, very lucky,” he said.
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| South Portland resident James Watson, then a 20-year-old seaman from Brooklyn, N.Y., with Hawaii’s Diamond Head in the background weeks after surviving the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. |
A SPECIAL KINSHIP
Born in upstate New York the youngest of four
children, Watson was 10 years old when his father moved the family to Brooklyn,
to take a job with his brother as a scrap iron dealer. In September 1938, just
out of high school, Watson joined the Navy, completely unaware, he says, of war
clouds looming elsewhere in the world.
“Things weren’t too good
during the Depression, everybody was looking for $36 a month with free room and
board,” he joked, of his rational for joining the service.
Watson was among the first
crew members to join the Phoenix after it launched in March 1938. It was
commissioned Oct. 3, 1938, and Watson was on board for its shakedown voyage
along the South American coast.
“You can’t imagine the pride as we saluted on all
sides to take our place in the fleet,” he recalled.
By late 1941, however, it was
clear to Watson that he would see action during his tour.
“We figured we were going to get into the war
eventually,” he said. “We started keeping 50 rounds of ready ammunition in each
of the guns a month ahead of Pearl Harbor.”
After
that engagement, Watson served through several battles as the Phoenix provided
cover for the U.S. ground forces who hop-scotched across the Pacific, pushing
the Japanese from island after island. There were successes, such as campaigns
in New Guinea, and less austere moments, such as when the ship spent 45 minutes
shelling enemy gun posts that turned out to be hastily disguised huts made of
painted coconut trees. In between, there were inexplicable moments, as there
are in any war, such as when the Phoenix came out of a 1943 overhaul in
Philadelphia to ferry Secretary of State Cordell Hull to a conference in
Casablanca.
“For
the life of me, I never understood why they couldn’t just fly him over,” said
Watson, with a rueful shake of the head.
Near
the end of the war, having earned a promotion to gunner’s mate first class,
Watson was transferred off the Phoenix to help supervise construction of new
ships. He was in port in Norfolk, Va. when the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb
on Hiroshima and an over-exuberant soldier ran a pair of woman’s panties and a
bra up a flagpole.
“They
were pretty mad at him but he just said, ‘Hey, this is what we’ve been fighting
for,” recalled Watson.
After
the war, the Phoenix was sold to Argentina in 1951. In 1982, it was sunk by the
British during the Falklands War, holding to this day the distinction of being
the only ship ever destroyed in combat by a nuclear submarine.
Meanwhile,
Watson attended college on the G.I. Bill and worked two years as a police
officer for the Port Authority of New York before “starting at the bottom” as a
file clerk at Standard Oil, the forerunner to today’s ExxonMobil.
Watson
met his wife near the start of his 26-year career with the oil company and
together they raised two boys and two girls before retiring to Cape Cod.
Eventually, they came to South Portland about a dozen years ago, buying a home
on Spurwink Avenue to be near a son who had relocated to Maine. After his wife
died, Watson took a room in the Betsy Ross home.
Today, Watson says he
“feels 100 percent,” spry and in possession of his full faculties, thanks, he
says, to daily doses of cod liver oil and vitamin E. He doesn’t know if he’ll
participate in this year’s Veterans Day parade, or if he’ll merely watch from
the window of his room.
Either way, he says, he’ll
always feel a special kinship with his Phoenix shipmates.
“We grew closer to one
another than to even our own individual families,” he said. “We were, each one,
mother, father and confessor to the other.”
To a man, he says, the most
frightening moment of the war came not at Pearl Harbor, but in the open waters
off Australia about a month later.
“On our way to the South
Pacific, we were to meet one Australian light cruiser,” said Watson. “Well, it
was dawn, general quarters, and nobody out there. Then, two minutes later,
bang, bang, came the word there were four of them – two light cruisers and two
heavy – out there.
“Then, over the ship’s
loudspeaker, came, ‘This is your captain speaking,’” said Watson. “He said,
'These ships have not been identified as friendly.' Then, he said, ‘I want you
to know, it has been my privilege to be your captain. If things get real rough,
I know you will do your very best.’
“Then, his voice kind of
choked up and he said, ‘Bless. Do your best,'” recalled Watson, almost choking
up himself at the memory.
During Pearl Harbor and the
battles that followed, Watson and his fellow sailors had no time to reflect on
danger. They simply fell back on their training and did their jobs, he said.
But the anticipation of that moment, waiting to find out if the ships seen on
the horizon where friend or foe, was the most nerve-wracking moment of the war,
said Watson.
“I tell you, I was never so
scared silly in my entire life as I was right then,” he said, noting that one
sailor near him actually wet himself before word came that all four ships were
Australian.
“So, no hero talk or
anything like that,” says Watson. “We were just young men doing our best in
impossible situations.”
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