It was an attack virtually assuring that a world already fracturing on one side of the Atlantic would become even more damaged and move deeper into a more violent and chaotic state. On December 7th, 1941, as American families were leaving church, preparing for Sunday dinner or young lovers were riding streetcars to the movies, Japanese pilots were fixing their sights on a thoroughly unprepared and unprotected target. At 7:49 a.m. Hawaii time, lives changed, others ended, and the world’s new reality began.
Eleven minutes after the attack began, Japanese pilots, conducting their task with a single objective, had systematically laid waste to the “majority of U.S. fighter planes” on America’s most fortified base in the Pacific and a large portion of its sea craft. A second wave of nearly 170 bombers followed, carrying payloads that would compound the chaos, turning a seaworthy flotilla to flotsam, including the U.S.S Arizona, perhaps the most iconic vessel of that moment.
The enemy, now gone, left nothing but smoke, agony and death in its wake. The nightmare’s death toll: 2,403 mostly young men dead, another 1,178 injured. By service, the lives of 2,008 sailors, 218 soldiers and airmen and 109 marines ended that Sunday morning. Another 68 civilians were also killed.
The U.S.S. Arizona, while only a single shard of that day’s carnage 81 years ago, is perhaps the most iconic ele- ment of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Today, oil still seeps from the ship that remains submerged in the harbor. Still on board are the remains of more than 900 sailors, many who were still asleep when the attack began. Among them are 23 sets of brothers. Thomas Augusta Free and his son, William Thomas Free, father-son crew mates, also remain entombed. But the ship is only one symbol of that tragic day.
New Mexico native Loney Jacques was a 25-year-old Chief Petty Officer serving on board the U.S.S. Oklahoma when the attack began, said his daughter Anita Endres. “He was in the engine room,” she said when the attack first began. “He survived because he disobeyed an order.”
The order, Endres said from her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, was to “batten down the hatches so the ship wouldn’t sink.” But thinking the first explosions would not be the last, he and another sailor working with him found an escape route and climbed to the deck. Fifteen other sailors working nearby did not escape. Scores of other sailors also died when they were trapped on the sinking vessel.
When Jacques and his shipmate emerged from their climb, the ship had already begun to list and slowly sink. Their only chance at survival was to jump overboard where, luckily, they were rescued by a nearby PT boat, said Endres. Others who’d also jumped from the ship into the oil stained and now burning water were not so lucky. Some drowned, an unknown number soaked in the oily and scalding water burned to death. There were others, like Jacques and his shipmate, who were also res- cued by PT boat crews.
Jacques remained in the Navy, making it his career. But the horror of the attack, the helplessness in not being able to help crewmates, perhaps a survivor’s guilt, followed him the rest of his life suspects his daughter. “He felt so bad for the men,” Endres said.
His naval career as a recruiter took him from state to state but, his daughter said, he could never hide from nor escape the real time horror of that single day. It clung to him like a curse. During his Navy career, Endres said, no one knew about PTSD, but the depression he lived with, she believes, was post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a permanent shadow each day of his life, she said.
“He had a couple of mental breakdowns,” said Endres. He was hospitalized once or twice, she recalled. “It was hard to watch him.” Endres, one of three daughters, speaks fondly of her father, a man she remembered for his charming sense of humor. But she also remembered how he was affected by the attack, especially on each anniversary. Still, each year, he dutifully honored its passing.
Chief Petty Officer Jacques was 25 on the day of the attack. But a single hour of that day replayed in his mind endlessly as if on a loop. The ‘day of infamy,’ as President Roosevelt labeled it, became—not only to Jacques but countless others—a lifetime of the same. Anniversaries only exacerbating it.
Despite the memory of what may have been the worst day of his life, Endres said her father would still take his family to December 7th gatherings where Pearl Harbor
survivors got together. She recalled one such New Mexico event. “I remember going to services with him and my mom,” she said. He went, but “he just got very quiet.” His reserve was very public, his pain very private. But in his own way he would remind his children of the day’s importance; ‘Lest we forget,’ he would tell them. The anguish of a single day was his lifelong penance, impenetrable by prayer, soothing words, even a loved one’s empathy.
“When my father died,” Endres said, “it was suicide.” The bright sunshine of a long-ago Hawaii in his mind could never overcome the darkness of a single hour in his life. “He suffered…he was in a lot of emotional pain.” For Jacques, the war ended, the battle never did.
The U.S.S Oklahoma’s service to the country ended December 7th, 1941. It was never again seaworthy. The lives of 429 men ended with it. Today a memorial of the battleship and its sacrifice stands quietly in Oklahoma City, testament to Chief Petty Officer Loney Jacques along with each member of its crew.
