Newill recalls deadly attack on Pearl Harbor

Editor’s note: Brothers Harry and Larry Newill, formerly of Lyons, both served in the United States Navy and were stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Their recollections of that day are included in the 1995 book, “A Time to Speak.” This article includes excerpts from that book.

Here’s how Harry Newill remembers it:

“If they’d given me another five minutes, I’d have been ashore. I had my dress whites on and everything, and our boatswain’s mate said to me and a kid by the name of Brockman, ‘If you don’t get up and sweep down the forecastle, you’re not going ashore.’

“So we hurried up and took our blouses off so we wouldn’t get them dirty. We ran up on the deck and about that time, the planes were coming over Ford Island. We didn’t know who they were. I’d never seen a red dot on a plane before in my life.”

Sailors in the U.S. Navy, Newill and his older brother, Larry, were both assigned to the minelayer USS Oglala, docked in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Larry had gone ashore Dec. 6, spending the night in Honolulu, but Harry was aboard the Oglala when the Sunday morning attack began.

“Brockman and I were standing there,” he said, “and the (planes) were diving up and down, nothing was happening and pretty soon, here comes a plane right toward us, real low on the water. About that time, everything blew over on Ford Island.

“That plane dropped that torpedo at us. Our boatswain’s mate came up and said, ‘That’s Japanese,’ because he’d been in the Navy a long time. He knew who they were. He said, ‘Hit the deck,’ and that’s what we did.”

The torpedo went under the Oglala and hit the light cruiser USS Helena to which the Oglala was tied. The backlash of the Helena explosion blew a hole in the Oglala, which began to fill with water.

As the Helena tried to get under way, her crew cut the lines holding the two ships. With nothing to keep her afloat, the Oglala began rolling to one side.

Harry and other crewmen jumped from the minelayer, swam to a dock and climbed a ladder where they hid beneath a pile of targets stored on the dock. During a lull in the attack, they ran to the nearby USS Dixie where the crew handed out Browning automatic rifles. Harry climbed to the roof of a shop and began shooting at the Japanese aircraft.

Meanwhile, Larry was trying to get from Honolulu to the Navy base.

“The minute we stepped out on the street, we saw the MPs and the Shore Patrol,” Larry said. “They had commandeered taxis, buses, whatever, to send you right out to the base, which was about eight miles away. It took 15, 20 minutes to get there.

“As we approached Pearl Harbor, you could see something was wrong. There were pillars of smoke, sounds of explosions. When I got to the main gate, a Marine asked where I was going and I said down to the Oglala, which was three or four blocks inside the base.

“He said, ‘Well, you can go down there, but it’s sunk or sinking now.’”

Working his way to the Oglala, Larry took cover under a barge on the dock as the Japanese pilots began their second wave of attack.

“That’s when they did a lot of damage to the battle ships,” Larry said. “Some were sinking anyway, and some were burning. Many of the ships that were afloat got their gun crews, and they were firing. This was one of the problems. Any little thing, they started firing. They were so nervous, they even fired at our own planes.”

During the attack, eight American battleships and 13 other naval vessels sank or were badly damaged. Almost 200 American aircraft were destroyed. Approximately 3,000 naval and military personnel died or were wounded.

In the chaos, Harry and Larry didn’t find each other right away — Harry slept two nights under the target stack — but when they did, the brothers tried to get word to their parents in Lyons.

“They sent us to a place to send telegrams home to your folks,” said Harry. “Larry and I both went … and we each sent a telegram to say we were safe and everything was fine. A day or two later, I sent another. We figured they knew all about it. I was reassigned to the USS Honolulu and I sent another letter from there, I don’t know how many days later.

“That was the only thing they got. I think Mom said it was a week or 10 days before she knew if we were dead or alive.”

Meanwhile, the Newill brothers and other survivors dealt with the aftermath of the attack.

“Bodies started coming up in the harbor, some burned, some drowned,” said Larry. “Boats would pick them up and bring them to the dock. From 10 feet out, lines were tied around the bodies, which were then hoisted up onto the dock.

“There were 20 or 30 guys working in this group. Doctors and dentists would look at these bodies and if they felt they could identify them, they’d be put in one area.

“Many had been burned so badly, they were like logs, you couldn’t even tell they were bodies. We worked in pairs, and we’d go around and get in line, and work our way up to the next.

“This friend and I handled three bodies. One looked like he’d just drowned and that wasn’t too bad. The next one was like picking up a log, so you didn’t really feel like it was a body.

“But the third one had been blown up, and I just got so sick, when we got done and got around to get back in line, we just kept right on going.

“We had never seen death before. I was a very immature 20.”

Many of the dead were buried in the National Cemetery in the Punchbowl, an extinct volcanic crater in Honolulu.

Larry remained stationed at Pearl Harbor and went on to make the Navy his career. He died in 2004.

Harry sailed into the South Pacific aboard the USS Honolulu, fighting at Guadalcanal, Tassafaronga, Kula Gulf and Kolombangara before being hospitalized with injuries in 1945.

He saw his parents twice in the five years he served in the Navy.

Now 84, Harry lives in Oakland and says he may be the only World War II Navy veteran left in Burt County.