By Glenda Verrett
The Silsbee (Texas) Bee newspaper
Many of the young men were getting ready for their duties, making beds, dressing for church or just enjoying the quietness that comes with a Sunday morning.
Looking back, there was no way any of them could have imagined what the next few hours would bring. The calm waters that harbored their ships would turn red with the blood of their fellow shipmates and friends. The skies that were once clear and blue would turn dark and shadowed with smoke. A day that many expected to be peaceful would turn into a day of pain and death.
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
• • •
A young man from Paris, Texas had just finished the mid-watch duty in the radio room of the USS. Phoenix . The 19-year-old, who had been in the U.S. Navy for barely a year, was climbing into his bunk for a nap when he heard the first blasts of a war that changed the world forever. He jumped from his bunk and headed to the deck of the ship to see the cause of the commotion.
He reached the deck in time to see the USS Oklahoma turning over in the waters of the Harbor.
“It was terrible. It was a mess, you know?” says Pearl Harbor survivor Richard Adams.
In the midst of the torpedo blast and aerial strikes, the young man became the seaman he was trained to be, as did most of the crew on the Phoenix.
“The best I can remember, we were going to find them. We got half way out of the channel following the (USS) Nevada. Men were standing on the beach saying ‘Go get ‘em’,” said Adams, who just moved from Washington D.C. to live with his daughter in Silsbee.
The Phoenix is one of the light cruisers that returned fire during the attack and joined in the search for the enemy once the enemy pulled back .
“Someone said they were closing the flood gates. My skipper said, ‘If they do, I’ll take it with me when I go out,’ “ says Adams. “We shot down five of them (Japanese aircraft). They took us by surprise, but it didn’t take us long to get ready.”
The ship became one of a quickly assembled band that searched for the enemy for 10 days after an attack that damaged 21 Navy ships, destroyed 185 military planes and damaged buildings on the island, including hospitals and military barracks.
After the unsuccessful search for the enemy, the Phoenix returned to Pearl Harbor to transport families of soldiers to the mainland of the United States. “We took families to San Fransisco,” says Adams. “We were worried for their safety, you know.”
The Phoenix spent the next month transporting children, wives, sisters and brothers to soldiers who were fallen, injured, missing or joined in the fight against those who attacked their home, their families, and their country.
For Adams’ own family, he had just sent a letter to his mother from Manilla. It was a few days later when the orders came to the Phoenix to go to Pearl Harbor to bring supplies to the hospital ship in the harbor.
“I had just mailed her (his mother) a letter. She ignored Pearl Harbor because she thought I was in Manilla,” he said.
The Japanese had been successful in their plan to hit Pearl Harbor hard, but it was underestimated what the United States could do, even when the port that harbored many of their ships and aircraft was destroyed. The war took a new turn and ships like the Phoenix and crewmen on them were prepared to do what needed to be done.
The Phoenix carried on with its duties in the United States until it was needed in the waters of Australia, where she fought along side the USS Houston Sea until it sank in the battle of Sunda Strait. According to Adams, after the sinking of the Houston, the Phoenix sailed the barrier reef of Australia until they were called to duty in Guadal Canal.
“In Guadal Canal, we got attacked by the Japenese,” says Adams. “I headed to the radio room. My friend, he was a signalman, he stepped onto the ladder and they dropped a torpedo and it blew off his legs. He died five minutes later.
“His name was K.H. Marineau,” says Adams. “He was my age. We were buddies. He’s still out there. We buried him at sea.”
The Phoenix and it’s crew fought in many battles of World War II — Pearl Harbor, Guadal Canal, Hollandia, Biak, Morotai, Leyte, Surigao Strait, and Balipapan. She was responsible for bring down many of the enemy’s aircraft that posed a danger to both the United States and its allies.
Adams served on the ship until 1945. The ship was decommissioned in July of 1946. In April of 1951, the Phoenix was sold to Argentina where she served for 31 in the Argentine Navy until she was sunk in 1982 in the Falklands War.
The ship may be in the sea, but the memories of her still linger in the minds United States War heroes.
“I wish we would have had an hour’s warning. We would have really done some bad damage to them,” says Adams about his crew and ship in Pearl Harbor.
Adams says he is not a war hero. He says he was just someone doing his job. He is one of just a few crewmen left from the Phoenix who were just doing their job that Sunday morning over 65 years ago. Adams retired from the Navy in 1961 and spent the next 20 years raising his family and working for the United States Post Office.
“The last meeting I went to (of Phoenix survivors who served during World War II), there were not 10 of us there,” says Adams of the meeting held in Fredricksburg. “They said that would be the last meeting we would have, because there was not enough of us left.”
“I’ve asked to be buried at Pearl Harbor.
“It was a beautiful place, except for that day,” he says.