Michael Shannon

Dedicated to all the swabs whove served particularly Richard Waller, Rod Gibson and Donald Polhemus.

I was a Swab. A Medical Corpsman and it was my good fortune to be stationed at the medical clinic at Pearl in 1969. I was finishing out my five year tour and I guess the Bureau had decided that I deserved some minor reward for some rough times.

No one quite knew what to do with me because all the available billets were filled so I spent the last six months of my enlistment doing whatever the Captain wanted done. I didn’t mind and in fact I got to do some interesting things that weren’t on the normal duty roster for a Corpsman who was a trained scrub nurse and had spent most of his enlistment standing on a little stainless steel stool passing instruments and counting sponges. At one duty station it wasn’t even a stool butt a plastic milk box. But that’s another story for another time.

Lots of freedom which is hardly a concept acknowledged by any service. For a time I was on loan to an Admiral as his driver. The job was to wash, wax and polish the Navy Blue automobile and drive his majesty wherever and whenever he needed to go. I wore white gloves and kept my uniform spiffy.

Now you might think Admirals being right up there with the Pope would be unapproachable, and believe me many of the Academy Boys were all that but not this one. This Admiral was relaxed and chatty and, all in all it was a good gig for someone who had seen too much seeing nasty business. He was part of the command structure so I spent a lot of time going places I wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Meetings at Tripler hospital, or up at Schofield Barracks in Wahiawa, sometimes for a command lunch at Hickam Field as it was still known. Park the car, open the door, salute his highness and then carry the Admirals briefcase and do the most military duty of all, wait.

I explored many of the nooks and crannies most sailors never see. Still today you can see the bullet pocked stucco walls of the old barracks at Schofield stitched by the 303 caliber machine guns mounted on the Zero fighters as they dove in from Kole Kole pass on their swing down towards Pearl and battleship row. There is even a small memorial to James Joyce an Army private who was there and wrote “From Here to Eternity.” The best first person account of that terrible morning.

The slugs from the 20mm’s shattered concrete revetments a the Kaneohe Marine base where the Catalina flying boats were parked are visible reminders of the absolute devastation. Near the Arizona is the rusted out hull of the Utah BB-31 unsalvageable and designated a war grave with its one hundred plus US sailors and Marines still trapped inside. An Arroyo Grande boy was trapped inside the capsized ship for days until the cutting torches finally freed him. I went to school with his son.

There are reminders everywhere of that “Day of Infamy.”
When I was at Pearl Harbor there were many WWII veterans in the services. The civilian cooks truck drivers and other contractors employed people who were there on that day. Not words in a book, but someone who had seen, heard and still had vivid memories of it. It was still just 28 years after the bombs ended it all.

Our warehouse had a janitor who was a veteran of nearly every part of the War. He had worked at the naval base and was on duty the morning of the attack. He served in the US Army with the famous 100th Infantry battalion which fought in the incredibly vicious battles up the spine of Italy and in southern France.**

After his return from Europe in 1946 he went back to his old job. He was still doing it in 1969.

People might be surprised today to know that he was only 22 years older than I was. An easy man to like and chat with.

But there was a day when that changed. Mid-morning on a Monday we were at the coffee pot together, ready to start the day, him swabbing decks and emptying cans and me waiting for the Admirals aide to call to get the car ready when in the distance we heard a faint throbbing growl of radial engines coming down from the north. A very unusual occurrence in the jet age. We walked outside and turning toward the saddle which connects Oahu’s two mountain ranges. We saw a gaggle of aircraft headed for us. Nearly indistinguishable at first they gradual grew in size as they came nearer. As the planes came in over the East Loch of Pearl, the old destroyer anchorage they peeled off to our right and for the first time we could see the red meatballs of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s attack aircraft.

Frank froze in place, you could hear his breath as he began to softly gasp. He dropped his coffee, the cup broke as it hit the deck. He did not just look stunned, he was. Time stood still, just for a moment.

After a moment of watching we could see that the planes were not really Japanese but American trainers painted to look like them.

The pretty Wave from West Virginia came out and down the steps and said, “I heard they are making a Movie.”

I didn’t know exactly why they were there but for young man who read I knew what they were supposed to be and was thrilled because I had never seen one in actual flight. There was one on the roof of a service station in Easton, near Fresno on the way to my aunt Mickeys house but I’d never seen the real thing.

Frank came back from wherever he was, looked down at the mess on the deck, looked over at me and whispered,

“Jesus, oh Jesus, I thought it was real.” So silly, so silly of me.”

I understood in that moment that there is something real behind the history books. Frank showed me that.

Across the glistening surface of the Pearl Harbor, over there by Ford Island are the Tears. The Black Tears rimmed with the rainbow crown that shines in the tropical sun. Every day the Arizona weeps for her children entombed in the blackened steel coffin that knows no time which was once the glory of the fleet.

Those boys are gone. their mothers are gone too. Only our collective memory keeps them alive. Arizona is the most sacred monument we have. To go there, as the locals say, “Geeve you chicken skin.”

My generation gave it’s fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts and cousins to this country. The Arizona belongs to them, not to you Mister FBI.

So, Ka$h Patel, Fuck You. Just Fuck You to the ends of the earth.

Seaman 1st, US Navy, 1966.

*Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) is widely regarded as one of the most historically accurate war films ever made, particularly for its balanced, dual-perspective approach to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. While dramatized, it heavily researched events, using both American and Japanese technical advisors, and is known for meticulous attention to operational detail and communication failures

**The 100th Infantry Battalion is a historic U.S. Army unit comprised mostly of Japanese Americans (Nisei) from Hawaii. Formed during World War II, it earned the moniker “Purple Heart Battalion” for its valor and heavy casualties. Today, it operates as the Army Reserve’s only infantry unit.

Michael Shannon lives and writes in California. Navy Veteran and proud of it.