Trapped at Pearl Harbor: Escape from the Battleship Oklahoma
By: Stephen Bower Young / Narrated By: Tim Murphy
Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
An Edge of the Seat Listen
Tho’ my dad has been gone many a year by now, I always think of him when the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor comes around. Pappo left this world on Dec. 6th, and I’ve always believed it was so that he could Be There the day before, in the Universal Elsewhere, to salute his childhood heroes, the men who inspired a lifelong love of Military History.
Inspired by him, I humbly and gratefully remember what happened on that day and the days after. And this year, I chose Trapped at Pearl Harbor by Stephen Bower Young, and I slammed the entire Listen in a single day. Hey, it’s barely over 6-hours long; it’s not only possible, the story makes it impossible to pause.
Things start off in Hawaii on a sleepy Dec. 6th, 1941 with sailors coming back from shore leave. Watch starts, and sailors hit their bunks. Through all of this, Young, only 19-years old at the time, carefully notes anomalies in protocol, changes in regular schedules, things that would go on to at first, show how the Japanese could come through undetected, and then depict how things could become dire on the ships so very quickly, so devastatingly thoroughly. An irregular inspection scheduled for Monday has ships exposed, so that their usual ability to seal out water was taken away. Adding that to the already horrible decisions to not patrol the Northern regions of the area, to not keep part of the Pacific Fleet out in open waters, to cluster ships so tightly, to not heed Memos that flatly stated to Be Ready At All Times? Disaster, a thousand times over.
About a third of this audiobook is of the prelude to disaster, and then the attack itself, with all the further poor choices made on unfounded beliefs that came with it. Men were ordered, even at gunpoint, to go down below, as it was believed that bombs were being rained down from the Japanese flyers. Actually, unknown to the military brass at the time, the Japanese had torpedo airplanes, and the Oklahoma was being rocked by torpedo blasts below.
This entire story is about the catastrophes as they unfolded. The stark and immediate listing of the Oklahoma could’ve been noted sooner, men might’ve gotten off sooner. They could’ve been allowed to seek safety on their own (A .45 pistol speaks louder than obvious unhinged commands), but were not allowed to. Finally, the order to Abandon Ship SHOULD have been carried out so that all men heard it. I’m being very careful here to not name names (Tho’ Young does, every step of the way) because this story had me Googling the beJESus outta my fingertips, looking up each individual, and I discovered that a few of the men who, say, did NOT give the order to their men but chose to leave instead, were haunted by their decisions, their choices, their actions.
For the rest of their lives.
Then I was on the edge of my seat as Young and his fellow seamen were trapped in an air pocket, getting to the point where they were making gallows humor bets: Young avows they’ll suffocate before they drown, yuk yuk. But when hero Julio DeCastro (Dude! I soooo looked HIM up!) makes contact and begins trying to get the trapped sailors out, the race against time really heats up. The air is foul by now, the change in air pressure has water rushing in, and the going is so very very slow.
Of course, we know that DeCastro’s efforts were not in vain, that Young did NOT die in that befouled air pocket, tasting fuel oil, and he did not drown. But damn! it gets down to the wire, nary a second to spare. And his first glimpse of just how thorough the Japanese were, just how calamitous an event it all was, is stark indeed.
All this is well-performed by Tim Murphy. He narrates the story with unfolding horror, with a sense of acute timing for action and chaotic conditions. When Young comes upon the mangled bodies of men who were dear friends, Murphy’s tones grow wistful as they’re remembered as young sailors, jauntily marching in Review in front of FDR. At the time, Young’s excitement was palpable: What adventures were in store for all of them, what sights would they see, what battles and glory would be won? Surely, he somberly laments: They neither deserved nor even dreamed of deaths such as these, blown apart, crushed by rolling shells, crashing to their deaths as the Oklahoma rolled. Murphy then goes on to magNIFicently capture the euphoria of escape, the smell of fresher air, the taste of an orange after death seemed imminent and all but assured. There are some production glitches near the end, the volume goes up and down, but believe it or not, I felt these actually added to the sense of the surreal, the sense of doom and confusion (And we all know I usually whine ceaselessly when I run into production flaws…). All around grand.
This was a truly singular experience, and tho’ it seems unhinged to put it this way: I vastly enjoyed it. The sense of the youth of the men, their futures imperiled at best or taken away so quickly and violently at worst. The utter joy to find one’s self still alive. The civilians and seamen who imMEDiately went into rescue mode.
The hope that would not die.
So very harrowing winds up so very exhilarating…
RIP to fine young men.
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