The Passing of (Another) American Hero

Greetings from the Left Coast!

Almost a year ago, in early November of 2007, I wrote about the passing of Retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, when it dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima. I called him an American hero. About a week ago, I learned of the passing of another American hero. This one lived a few doors down from me for several years, and yet I never really knew the story that lay behind the automobile license plate that said, “Pearl Harbor Survivor.” To me, he was a nice old man (a few decades older than me, anyway) in flannel shirts and tan slacks. I knew him as a retired carpet layer – an occupation he amazingly continued in until the age of seventy-two. But Ralph Verne Nichols was there at the beginning of what Paul Tibbets helped to end.

What I now know came to me through his son, Chief Petty Officer Russ Nichols, who at the time of this writing is stationed at Naval Station Bremerton, Washington. Russ was kind enough to share a few pages of his father’s journal, in which Verne described firsthand what he saw and felt on that December morning nearly sixty-seven years ago.

After graduating from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree and a Doctorate of Law (Verne was a bright young man – he had been valedictorian of his high school graduating class as well), he joined the Navy. He arrived in Pearl Harbor in late November, 1941, aboard the battleship U.S.S. California. Upon arrival, he was supposed to transfer to the U.S.S. Enterprise, but she was still at sea.

Students of World War II will recall that Pearl’s aircraft carriers were out on maneuvers, and were delayed by a storm, which is why they were not in port on the morning of December 7. Had it not been for that storm, and had they been in port, the outcome of the war in the Pacific could have been quite different. Admiral Nagumo held back his final wave of attack aircraft because he didn’t know where the American carriers were, and wanted to keep his aircraft in reserve to protect his own fleet in case they were discovered. The attack mission they didn’t fly was supposed to put Pearl Harbor’s shipyards out of commission. But because the mission didn’t fly, the shipyards survived, and several hundred American heroes working around the clock were able to get severely damaged ships back in action – all because a storm delayed the return of America’s carrier fleet.

But since the Enterprise wasn’t around, Verne’s orders were changed, and he transferred to the U.S.S. Curtiss, a seaplane tender. The Curtiss normally berthed just ahead of all the battleships on battleship row, but on the night of December 6, she was returning from a day at sea towing targets for American planes, and the recognition signals had been changed while she was away. In the resulting confusion, she ended up moored at Pearl City just behind the battleship U.S.S. Utah, a little farther away from the main action.

Here’s what happened the next morning, in his own words:

“I had just finished my sunny-side up eggs and was looking out our bomb bay doors when I saw a series of explosions from Ford Island and then as the sound reached me came the explosions. I was absolutely spell-bound and horrified as I saw the explosions ripping apart hangers and blowing up planes and gasoline. In just a few moments the general quarters alarm was sounded. My general quarters station was in the radio shack which was the highest point top-side near where the Captain and Navigator were located. As green as I was I knew we were being attacked and as I went up the last steel ladder before reaching the radio shack I could see the Japanese zeros with their bullets ricocheting off our steel bulkheads. Everyone was so caught off guard that at first no one was found who had the key to the ammunition locker but soon someone took a steel bar and forced the lock. A little later our 50 caliber machine guns went into action. Then suddenly there was a salvo from our forward five inch guns. We found out almost immediately that we had hit one of the midget Japanese submarines that had found its way thru the nets into the harbor. They had fired a torpedo just missing our ship. We were all stunned as we saw the effects of the initial phase of the sneak attack, as all the battleships alongside battleship row had been hit and were burning fiercely. Our communications line with the transmitter room aboard ship became inoperative and Chief Petty Officer Stout signaled me silently to take them a message. I had just delivered the message when an explosion ripped through the transmitter room and I was hurled back against the bulkhead. A 500 pound bomb (delayed action) had just gone down thru three decks and had exploded next to the compartment where the transmitter room was located. One of the men in the transmitter room, whom I had only known about two weeks, ran with one foot cleaved off by a falling transmitter to the main deck aft seeking medical aid. During the confusion that followed he died from loss of blood before anyone could help him. I dazedly made my way back to the radio shack amid all the smoke, confusion and strafing bullets. I had no sooner dogged the door when another loud explosion rocked the ship. At first we thought it was another bomb but soon the Captain was on the loud speaker and said: “A Japanese plane has just struck amidships.” Evidently this was one of the Japanese kami-kaze planes and he took many of my shipmates with him. The wreckage was about 40 feet from the radio shack.”

The bomb that bounced Verne off the bulkhead had exploded between the 150,000 gallons of aviation gas they had aboard, and their two ammunition holds. Had the bomb exploded a little bit to one side or the other, I suspect that Verne's story would have ended there, and you wouldn’t be reading this right now. Verne’s journal doesn’t go into much detail about his back injury – he does say that it gave him intermittent trouble all the time he was in the service, and concedes that “to this day it hurts where I was blown against the bulkhead.” The fact is that it made it very painful and difficult for him to sit for any length of time. So, in case you were wondering why a guy with a law degree was laying carpet – that’s why. It would have been too painful to try to sit in a courtroom, so he went back to the career that had paid for his college education.

Like countless soldiers and sailors before and since, Verne made a deal with God that December morning: “if he would see me thru this holocaust that I would try my best for the remainder of my life to serve him.” No one on this earth keeps a record of how many who make that deal actually keep their end of the bargain. Verne kept his - that was obvious to anyone who knew him at all. And that in itself may tell you all you really need to know about what kind of man he was.

After receiving an Honorable Discharge at the end of the war, Verne did what most veterans did: he came home, and raised a family. I never heard him talk about what he had seen and experienced. I’ve noticed that most men who have gone through what Verne went through tend not to talk much about it. When he passed away on October 9 at the age of 90, he had helped to raise seven children, who had raised twenty-four grandchildren, who were busy raising twenty-six great-grandchildren. Not many of us will get to see that many of our descendants, and I’m sure he considered himself blessed. And if you had asked him, I believe he would have told you that his family was more important than anything he did in the war.

According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, cited by Tom Bevan in his blog post at Real Clear Politics two years ago on the 65th anniversary of the attack, there were at that time only 5,000 remaining of the 70,000 sailors and soldiers who were stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. There are fewer every day. One day soon, they will all be gone, and we will all be the poorer for their passing.

Last Friday, October 17, 2008, one of them was laid to rest at Floral Hills Cemetery, Lynnwood, Washington. I was not in attendance, but my wife led the music at his memorial service, so I got her firsthand report. Aside from his substantial family, there were not a lot of others there…but when you’re 90 years old, you tend not to have much of a peer group left, and he had spent the last fifteen years of his life living in Southern California. Still, one can’t help but feel that, by rights, the world should have taken greater note of the passing of another hero.

Some have called them America's "greatest generation." Certainly they were a great generation. But there have been many, and, God willing, there will be many more. What Verne's generation did, after saving the Free World, was to make sure that the next generation carried the seeds of its own greatness, which it could then pass on to the generation after that - so that when the time arose for great deeds again, as it inevitably does, there will again be those who can and will rise to the occasion. Look around yourself today, and you'll see them.

So I’d like to thank Chief Petty Officer Russ Nichols, United States Navy, for sharing such an intimate glimpse into his father’s life, and I’d like to thank Russ for his own service to our country. And I would like to thank Verne Nichols not just for his Naval service, but for something even more significant: I’d like to thank him for the example he set, over the last six decades and change, for his seven children, and twenty-four grandchildren, and twenty-six great-grandchildren, and for anyone else who was paying attention. And I’d like to say that I’m sincerely sorry that I didn’t take the time to get to know him better when I had the chance.

Thanks for listening.