U.S. leaders did not expect a Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but — for whatever reason — at least one ship pulled away from the harbor before the attack. And it didn’t go back.
The ship, likely a destroyer, carried Naval sonarman Jesse O’Dell, father of Emporian Jeff O’Dell. Jeff told the brief story of his father’s experience during a recent meeting of the Noon Rotary Club, of which he is a member.
Jesse had joined the Navy before the war began, Jeff said.
“To him, it was apparent that there was a war coming and to get into the Navy meant a warm bed and food,” Jeff said during a telephone interview this morning.
Jesse had signed on as a sonarman.
“It was mostly audio and it would ping and the reflection of the sound determined what it was,” Jeff said. “He had a fine-tuned ear and could ... distinguish ships and whales because it could be easily mistaken.”
The story of Pearl Harbor was one of only four that Jesse O’Dell related to his family, and those stories were not packed with details.
“He would never talk about the war,” Jeff said.
All Jesse told them was “simply that they pulled into Pearl Harbor just before the attack, and right before the attack, they had to leave,” Jeff said. “That was unexpected, as least as far as he knew. He was low on the food chain.
“I don’t know which direction they went, or how far they got away but they listened to the attack on the radio and were asked if they wanted to come back, and they said, ‘No.’”
The raid that day was as unexpected as the Japanese hoped it would be. Peace negotiations were coming to a close by late November 1941, and U.S. officials, who were able to de-code the Japanese diplomatic codes, fully expected a Japanese attack on islands off southeast Asia. They did not anticipate that the Japanese forces also would attack to the east, in Hawaii.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the U.S. Fleet to Pearl Harbor about 18 months earlier, most likely in an attempt to deter Japanese aggression. Western powers had almost eliminated trade with Japan by July 1941; Japan had been at war with China since 1937 and badly needed oil and other raw materials, according to historical records.
The first wave in the attack on Pearl Harbor started about 6:09 a.m., when 181 planes — mostly torpedo bombers, dive bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters — were launched off six Japanese carriers. The Japanese planes hit American ships and military installations simultaneously at 7:55 a.m.
The battleship USS Arizona first was blown apart by an armor-piercing bomb that penetrated the forward ammunition compartment.
By the end of the attack, 21 U.S. ships of the Pacific Fleet were damaged; the death toll reached 2,350, and 68 civilians and 1,178 military personnel were injured. Among the total deaths at Pearl Harbor, 1,177 reportedly were from the Arizona.
The attack started a war with Japan that did not end until the Japanese officially surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945. History records, however, that Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced the country’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, as the result of the devastation caused on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Pearl Harbor attack, and Jesse O’Dell’s unexpected good fortune in being on the right ship at the right time, allowed him to come home and relate the story to his family, even though details were sparse.
Some could speculate on whether the ship’s captain had a premonition of imminent danger or had heard a last-minute rumor that prompted him to leave port. It could even be speculated that Jesse O’Dell, with his fine-tuned ear, might have picked up some sonar pings that he could have identified as the midget submarines the Imperial Japanese Navy used as part of the attack.
The details apparently did not matter to Jesse, who carried home one overriding thought about his brief experience at Pearl Harbor.
“He just felt lucky that he had to leave,” Jeff said.
create (anonymous) says...
O'Dell was lucky indeed.
I hope all those who vacation in the Hawaiian Islands get to visit the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. All hands are still aboard. She is an impressive sight, and incredibly quiet. All you can hear is the lapping of the water against the memorial pilings.
December 7, 2007 at 5:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )