Survivor Arles Cole recalls Christmas shopping and sleeping on the navigational bridge in the hours before the Japanese attack.
At the behest of a commanding officer, Arles Cole went Christmas shopping on Dec. 6, 1941.
He vividly remembers some of the battleships being “all stacked up in the harbor” — the Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and his ship, West Virginia.
“The captain told us that whoever wanted to go ashore to buy Christmas presents for our mothers, our families, our friends must do that this Saturday night,” said Cole, who was 17 at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “I went by myself and brought several gifts back to the ship and put them atop my locker.”
But those weren’t the only gifts he bought on that blissful day in paradise. He bought two identical pictures of a Hawaiian bird for his oldest sister and grandmother. “The beauty of the flower and the birds in Hawaii, I was impressed with these pictures with all that color. They had made the pictures out of the feathers of the birds.”
When the storekeeper asked if Cole would like those shipped to his home, he accepted. “Those two presents came back home,” he said. “They kept them for years. My grandmother kept hers for many years until she died, then it went to my mother and then my wife.” After his wife died, Cole displayed it outside his home, where it was stolen.
Of course, the other presents Cole bought on Dec. 6, 1941, were lost forever the following day.
The night of Dec. 6 Cole decided not to sleep in his regular bunk. He retrieved a pillow and a mat and went up to the navigational bridge to sleep on the chart table. “I missed breakfast then stepped out about 8 a.m. and stepped out on the wing of the navigational bridge,” he recalled. “A few minutes later, I heard some strange noises and heard some explosions. Over on Ford Island, black smoke was coming from the airport.”
Within minutes, someone yelled, “We’re under attack,” Cole remembered. “Then a plane with giant red balls on its wings flew over the bride of the West Virginia. Sure enough we had just watched the beginning of the attack on our airplanes, our airfields, our airmen. The Japanese decided to destroy our airports first.”
Cole and other sailors valiantly tried to fight the fires aboard the West Virginia, which was hit by seven torpedoes and two bombs. But eventually the order was given to abandon the battleship.
Cole, who lives in Tulsa, Okla., nearly didn’t join the Navy.
He almost joined the Army a year earlier when an aggressive recruiter wanted to sign him up along with his older brother, Jay. Arles was bigger and stronger than Jay. But their father declined the recruiter’s wishes, telling him he wouldn’t lie about his son’s age.
Instead, Cole joined the Navy when its “Kiddie Cruise” program allowed 17-year-olds to join.
Cole has some advice for today’s generation of servicemembers.
“Hang in there,” he said. “Train, train, train. Do your job. Learn because the Navy can give you a good job, so can the Army. And so can the Marines and Air Force.”
It’s a message that paid off for Cole and his shipmates 75 years ago this week.
He explains that as the attack unfolded, a dud bomb hit the West Virginia but did not explode. “It made a hole, made an opening,” Cole said. “I’m three decks below the main deck, can’t get out and drowning. Water is nipping at my tail and I’m trying to get out of there.
“It’s amazing what we did during World War II. We did something right. I believe God was on our side.”
To watch the live stream of the 79th National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Commemoration on Monday, starting at 8:00 a.m. Hawaii time (1 p.m. Eastern), go to https://pearlharborevents.wordpress.com/broadcast/.
- Honor & Remembrance