Pearl Harbor veterans can’t, and won’t, forget

It was supposed to be a quiet Sunday at Pearl Harbor when Paul Goodyear went on duty on the USS Oklahoma that morning 66 years ago.

Below deck, Ed Vezey and his roommate, Frank Flaherty were spending a leisurely morning arguing whether to go swimming before or after breakfast.

Theirs and many other lives would be changed moments later.

A plane dropped a bomb that created what looked like a miniature atomic bomb explosion, said Goodyear.

He raised his binoculars to his eyes and saw that the planes were Japanese, not American.

Down below, Vezey and Flaherty were knocked out of their leisurely thoughts by the general alarm ordering all hands to man their battle stations.

“It shocked us wide awake and put us into action,” Vezey said.

It was Dec. 7, 1941, a day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would call a Day of Infamy.

Many men on ships at anchor around Ford Island in Pearl Harbor were killed in the surprise attack.

On the USS Oklahoma, 429 died.

Flaherty would be killed and later awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism posthumously.

Memorial dedication

At noon Friday, a USS Oklahoma Memorial will be dedicated on Ford Island close to where the ship capsized during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

For Goodyear, Vezey and others, the dedication will right a longtime wrong. Memorials exist for other ships in the harbor that day 66 years ago, but not the USS Oklahoma.

It has been a long quest for Goodyear, Vezey and many others.

Goodyear, 89, of Casa Grande, Ariz., said at least 15 USS Oklahoma survivors will be there plus 350 families and friends whose loved ones died on the ship that day.

Ira Williams, 93, of Dewey, who was on the ship when Japanese planes attacked, will not be going to Hawaii.

Because of his age, his daughter and her husband will go for him.

“It means a lot to me” Williams said of the memorial.

Williams said last year that he “saw two planes that dropped the torpedoes that hit us in mid section.”

He said then and again recently that he didn’t know how he got off the Oklahoma that day.

Raising the flag

While Williams, Goodyear and Vezey were battling for their lives that day, other Oklahomans on other ships in the harbor also were fighting for their lives.

Arles E. Cole, 83, of Tulsa will tell you that his mother’s prayers and the hand of God saved his life that day.

A Porum farm boy, Cole was near the bridge of the battleship West Virginia, that day.

“We saw those bombs and things happening. A plane flew over the West Virginia, banked, and we saw a big red ball on the plane. Somebody said ‘they’re Japanese.’.”

His battle station was four decks below and he headed for it.

Cole got to the third deck on the side where Japanese torpedoes hit.

A bomb hit nearby but didn’t explode.

“I have looked back over the years, and I see two areas where God had his hand on me,” Cole said. “If the bomb had exploded, it would have killed me. If it hadn’t gone through the deck as a dud and gave me an escape hole, I could not have crawled out. I would have drowned.”

He got onto the deck saw that the flags weren’t flying and ran to a locker area, picked the largest American flag he could find.

The ropes to raise the flag were destroyed by fire.

Coles shinnied up the flag pole and tied the flag to the pole.

“I was proud of the fact I did raise that flag.

“I had many instances where life was on the balance. I was in harms way where other men were killed or wounded, and I didn’t get a scratch.

“I’m really proud of that flag and happy that I had something to do with it,” Cole said.

Out gunned

John Pidcock, 83, of Sand Springs was on the USS Tangier at Pearl Harbor. It performed maintenance for large sea planes.

“I felt scared as soon as I realized what had happened,” he said.

But the battle station for Pidcock and his gun crew was a 5-inch gun for fighting other ships.

“It was utterly useless for this kind of battle,” Pidcock said. But they stayed there throughout the battle.

Shrapnel was flying nearby, he said, and he watched the Japanese planes bombing the other ships.

“They were really in on the know. They knew exactly what they were doing,” he said.

“Blankety blank”

Ted Kuykendall, 86, who was raised in Oilton and now lives in Tulsa, was on the USS Nevada, the sister ship of the Oklahoma.

“We were the only ship of the battleships to get under way,” he said. “We started out the channel, and then they tried to sink us in the channel so we ran it aground at hospital point and the tugs pushed us over the beach.

“About that time the bell sounded for 8 a.m. colors (raising the flag). The band was out on the fantail. We were saluting the colors and the first plane made a strafing run over the ship. One of my shipmates said it’s a blankety blank Jap. All hell broke loose.”

The Nevada was hit by a torpedo and bombs.

It blew Kuykendall through a compartment area, but he wasn’t severely injured.

“We had heard this bombing at Hickam Field. Our thought was the damn Army was having drills on a Sunday,” he said.

Never forget

Vezey, 87, of Center, Colo., in an interview earlier this year, said when he’s asked what comes to mind when he thinks about Pearl Harbor, he says it’s faces, old buddies, roommates, shipmates … just faces.

Holding a cross he wears around his neck, Vezey said:

“People say forgive and forget. I say, pardon me. I can forgive. That’s my duty wearing this cross. Don’t ask me to forget.”