Wages of War

Published:  Wednesday, July 2, 2008 (5 months ago)
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By EDYTHE DEAN

Part II

The USS Nevada was commissioned March of 1916 and soon joined the Atlantic Fleet and patrolled coastal waters and sailed to Ireland where she made sweeps of the North Sea. She also was one of the escort ships for Wilson in 1918.
On December 7, 1941, she was moored off Ford Island (Ford Island is in the middle of Pearl Harbor) and was struck by possibly three torpedoes and bombs by the Japanese.
Attempting to leave the harbor she was struck again and feared sinking and blocking the harbor so she was beached. She lost 50 men and 109 were wounded. She was repaired and provided fire support for Attu off Alaska. She then sailed for Europe in preparation for Normandy. She  then returned to the Pacific where she aided in the mightiest pre-invasion force ever off of Okinawa. She pounded Japanese airfields, shore defenses, supply dumps and through it all lost 11 men. In March she was struck by a suicide plane but continued to serve. She was assigned as a target ship in 1946, for the Bikini atomic experiments and survived and returned to Pearl Harbor where she was decommissioned and sunk by gunfire and aerial torpedoes off Hawaii July 31, 1948. The Nevada received 7 battle stars for her service.
The USS Oklahoma was commissioned in May of 1916. She joined the Atlantic Fleet and protected Allied convoys there. She also helped escort Wilson to France.
She was based in Pearl Harbor in 1940 carrying out intensive exercises and was moored in Battleship Row 7 when the Japanese attacked. Within 20 minutes she began to capsize as the bombs hit her. Twenty officers and 395 enlisted men were either killed or missing and 32 wounded. She was salvaged and returned to drydock in December 1944. She was eventually stripped of her guns and superstructure and sold for salvage. She parted her tow line May 17, 1947 and sank 540 miles out from Pearl Harbor. She received one battle star for her service.
The USS Arizona was commissioned in October of 1916. She then departed for a shakedown cruise to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and returned for repairs and alternations on April 3, 1917. As three day later the U.S. declared war she patrolled the eastern seaboard. She was an oil burner so she was not deployed to Europe due to the scarcity of fuel oil. She was also one of the escort ships for Wilson. She then embarked homeward with 238 veterans who longed for home.
In 1938 she became the flagship for Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz who later became Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. In 1940 Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd became her commander. She anchored in Pearl Harbor in February of 1941 and had a brief overhaul and received a search radar atop her foremast. She conducted training with the Nevada, and Oklahoma doing a night firing exercise and all three ships were moored at keys along Ford Island on the July 5.
Arizona took a repair ship alongside on July 6 and thus the two ships were moored together on the morning of Dec. 7. Her air raid alarm went off at 0755 and she sustained eight bomb hits, of which one hit the forecastle, glanced off the face plate of the turret II and penetrated the deck and exploded in the powder magazine. A monstrous explosion tore through the ship and touched off fierce fires that burned for two days. There were attempts to get survivors off the ship but few made it. The fires and blast killed 1,103 of the 1,400 aboard. This was half the casualties suffered by the entire fleet.
Placed “in ordinary” at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 29, 1941, she was struck from the naval registry. Arizona’s wreck remains at Pearl Harbor as a memorial to the crew that was lost that morning.
On March 7, 1950, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet raised the colors over her remains and President Eisenhower and President Kennedy designated the Arizona a national shrine. Arizona was awarded one battle star for her service.
The USS Wheaton transported many of the brave dead from the battlefields of Europe back to their families. Harold Manship of Van Wert, who was killed in action was one of those.
James Mounts of Van Wert served at the Naval Hospital in Gulfport, Mississippi. By the end of the Great War, we had doubled the number of ships available.

In reading these accounts I took notice that we were well prepared to protect our nation from all who would challenge us.
May we ever stay vigilant!

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