Young authored the riveting book, Trapped at Pearl Harbor: Escape from Battleship Oklahoma which describes the men’s terrifying experiences in horrendous detail. It has always been a yearly ritual of mine to read the book on the night of December 6-7.
Young’s battle wasn’t about the carnage that was taking place all around them. Trapped in a very small, confined space, he was virtually unaware of anything else other than the Japanese had sunk his ship. The realism and horror at the feeling of his ship being capsized are clearly felt as one turns the pages.
You can almost feel the cold water slowly but inescapably rise; the fuel oil taste which would turn stomachs; and the nasty fetid air that would soon envelop the men. Young’s descriptive realism is incredible.
The young sailors would try to force wisecracks. Others would succumb to despair. Finally, the men, in total darkness, would go quiet, as if in a church service, in an effort to preserve air.
The men decided to try another room called the Lucky Bag to see if they could stay dry and breathe long enough there to be rescued. The room had only one entrance and exit but it was at least dry. The room on the opposite side of the wall held sailors still alive in the No. 4 radio compartment.
The Japanese attack was over in 90 minutes and Navy personnel and civilian dock workers immediately jumped into action, beginning the task of trying to rescue the men trapped below decks. However, because of the chaos and destruction all around them, they weren’t able to mount any serious rescue attempt on December 7. It wasn’t until around 1:00 a.m on December 8, that the rescue crews would be able to get enough air compressors, pumps, chipping tools, and torches alongside the hull to begin their work in earnest.
As the men trapped inside the ship nodded in and out of restless sleep, they were woken to the sound of air hammers in the distance trying to cut through the hull to reach them. The men began tapping out SOS code to alert the rescuers. Soon the hammering could be heard much closer. The hammerers would periodically pause to listen if the trapped sailors were close by.
The men in the No. 4 radio compartment yelled through the steel bulkhead that the rescuers were cutting to free them. Young yelled to his shipmates to alert the rescuers that they were just on the other side of the wall. “Okay!, don’t worry. If they can get to us, we’ll tell ’em,” they replied.
Twenty-five hours after the Oklahoma had capsized, Yard worker Joe Bulgo cut through to the sailors in the No. 4 radio compartment. “There are some guys trapped in there,” one sailor said, pointing to the wall behind him and into Young’s room. “We’ll get ’em out,” said Julio DeCastro who was instrumental in organizing the rescue. De Castro hadn’t even waited for rescue boats. He and some of his fellow workers had swum out to see if anyone was still alive in the capsized ship.
Young yelled to the rescue team on the other side. DeCastro’s calm voice came back, promising he would get them out. But as they began cutting through the bulkhead, air from the Lucky Bag compartment began to release and water started rising. There was momentary panic but as DeCastro’s men began their work, the men inside tried in vain to seal the hatch to the Lucky Bag.
It was the longest 60 minutes of Young’s life. The water level had reached their knees but finally, they had three cuts in the bulkhead. And the sweetest words Young had ever heard were Bulgo yelling, “Look out for your hands, boys.” With a sledgehammer, he pounded the wall creating an opening. The sailors scrambled through the opening and were guided up and out by DeCastro’s men. They made it out by 9:00 a.m. Young recalled that the sun was bright and the air smelled fresh. The 11 men in the No. 4 gun turret had survived.
The sailors onboard the USS Maryland next to the Oklahoma watched the event unfold and began cheering as the men clambered out of their doomed ship. In all, 32 men would be rescued from the crippled USS Oklahoma. The ship would never sail again.
Today we remember the 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians, who lost their lives that morning, as well as the 19 American ships, sunk or damaged. We should pause to also remember the heroes on that fateful day. Men like Julio De Castro and Stephen Young.
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