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By Root 819 0

Stratton and his wife at the fiftieth anniversary reunion at Pearl Harbor and sat through an interview as he again recounted his story. At the end, he unbuttoned his shirt to show us his seamed, scarred flesh. His wife, tears in her eyes, told us not only did Arizona still bleed, so too did her husband, who had just undergone yet another operation on his burned skin. As she talked, I thought back to my dive and how I had drifted past the spot where Stratton made his dash for life. Don Stratton’s ordeal makes that spot of deck special, just as all the lives lived and lost on Arizona make the whole ship special.

USS UTAH

On the opposite shore of Ford Island, off Battleship Row, lie the remains of USS Utah, sunk on December 7 and, like Arizona, never raised after the battle. Unlike Arizona, Utah is rarely visited, and the memorial to the ship and her dead is in a non-public area on the island’s shore.

The remains of USS Utah, sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Photo by Gary Cummins, USS Arizona Memorial/National Park Service

Lenihan, Larry Murphy, Jerry Livingston and Larry Nordby had made a number of dives on Utah, and in the summer of 1988, took me on my first and only dive there. Commissioned as battleship 88–31, Utah, by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, was serving as a target ship: aerial bombers practiced by dropping dummy bombs on her decks. For protection, the decks were covered by thick timbers. They were no protection on December 7.

Japanese planners had ordered their pilots to ignore Utah, but despite this, two torpedo bombers skimmed along the surface of the water and launched their weapons. Ensign Tom Anderson was running on the deck to sound the alarm when the first torpedo struck the port side, “staggering the ship.” A geyser of water shot up the side and came down on him. Picking himself up, Anderson reached the alarm gong and pulled it. Utah continued to list to port as the second torpedo detonated. Captain James Steele was ashore, and Lieutenant Commander Solomon S. Isquith was in command. As Utah started to go down, Isquith gave the order to abandon ship over the starboard side, so that the capsizing hulk would not roll over on top of them. Eleven minutes after the first torpedo hit, Utah sank.

Utah’s crew had more chances to escape than the men on Arizona, but it was often a harrowing, near thing. Seaman 2nd Class James Oberto started to climb through a hatch as “an alarming amount of seawater came cascading in the hatch opening just above our heads. We started to climb in single file to the second deck. Compounding our situation were the tons of water pouring in on use from the open portholes on the port side. We were standing in water nearly to our knees.” Oberto made it to the deck, as did Radioman 3rd Class Clarence W Durham. But as Durham climbed out, he looked back and saw that the steel “battle bar” grates had broken free and blocked off the escape route of some of the engine room crew. “I will never forget the faces of those men trapped in the Engine Room. I knew there was no way I could lift those steel grates and I also knew at that point that my chances were very slim of getting out of there myself.” Durham made it out as Utah rolled. He slid down the “rough barnacle-encrusted steel hull,” ripping himself open.

One of the trapped men, Fireman 2nd Class John Vaessen, got through a battle grate just before it slammed shut, trapping his shipmate Joe Barta. As the ship capsized, Vaessen said, “Batteries began exploding. I was hit with deck plates, fire extinguishers, etc.” Climbing up into the bilge, once at the bottom of the hull and now exposed to the air, he “could hear the superstructure break and the water would rush closer.” Taking a wrench, he beat against the hull to call for help. “I got an answer then silence, then rat-a-tat-tat. I thought that was a pneumatic tool. It was strafing.” Japanese planes, firing at men in the water and across the hull of the overturned battleship, were claiming more lives. Vaessen’s rescuers did not give up and used a blowtorch to cut