Vengeance: Hatred and Honor

by Brett Ashton

  The compartment had been pumped out, and any linen was removed to prevent mold but otherwise had been left alone. Everything was in disarray, but the lockers, being bolted to the floor, were still intact. Several of the lockers had been cut open, possibly by some of the officers I used to share this room with. I found mine, and the chief produced a set of bolt cutters from the toolbox he carried with him and snapped the rusted lock off of it.

  I opened it up, prying the door with some force to break the rusty hinges. Inside were my old uniforms in total disarray and covered with oil. Letters from my wife in a box were covered with mold, and the ink no longer was legible from being submerged in salt water for so long. My rank insignia, medals, the last trophy I had won in the ship’s shooting team, and most of the very few trinkets we were allowed to bring aboard ship were right where I had left them, except they had been carelessly flipped over, then flipped back.

  I spent the better part of an hour going through my old things, trying to find something to salvage, but there was nothing that was worth anything to me except for the medals and the trophy. Most of the contents were barely recognizable, let alone usable. On cue, the chief produced a bag from his tool box to put my effects in and asked if there was anything else I wanted to see while I was there.

  “Yes there is, chief. I need to go to the armory.”

  And so we wound our way through the darkened passages of the dead ship up and down several decks in a way I wouldn’t have gone before. The chief explained that, due to the damage to the ship, several passageways were no longer accessible the way they used to be. Some of the bulkheads and hatches were moved to facilitate the installation of the patches that were keeping the ship afloat, particularly on the port side.

  I couldn’t help but think of the attack, when I made my run down the port side of the ship, ordering as many of the crew as I could to abandon ship.

  On the way, we passed the turret where Ensign Flaherty was last seen by Lieutenant Lewis. I stopped briefly to look in but did not enter it.

  Eventually we arrived in the armory. The heavy security door had been removed and was nowhere to be found. Back in the aft part of the room, I found what I was looking for: another small locker used for storing the officer’s sidearms. Captain Bode didn’t allow me to carry my sidearm in those days, and I had no reason to. We were at peace. The sidearm I currently carried was a replacement issued to me after the attack. With patience and practice, I had fine tuned it to shoot nearly as well as the one I was currently looking for.

  The chief had a little more trouble with the door to this locker than he did with my own locker, but soon enough, we were inside. The handguns inside had all been spilled off of their racks when the ship rolled over and were in a pile in the bottom of the locker. I kept mine separate in its own box, which I found after a brief search. I wiped the nameplate off with the sleeve of my coveralls and read “LCDR Jacob Williams.”

  “Lieutenant commander to captain in this time? That’s a pretty good advancement, sir,” the chief said. I just simply nodded in reply and opened the box.

  I knew from the condition of the other guns in the locker what I would find. My prize-winning Colt forty-five had rusted solid. Only the pearl grips remained intact, and with a little bit of effort, they began to shine through the grime. My name, which had been engraved in the slide, along with the designs that had surrounded it, had all but rusted off.

  Susan had been so very furious when she found out how much money I had spent having this gun engraved like that. And parts of it were even plated with gold. I’d spent nearly a whole paycheck as a lieutenant junior grade on it, even during the great depression. She didn’t talk to me for nearly a week.

  But then I sat there in the darkness under a flashlight held by the chief, turning it over and over in my hand while it cast an eerie shadow on the floor. I was thinking of my wife and kids at home, of the way this ship used to be, and her crew members, both dead and alive. When was the last time I walked with Susan in the park where I asked her to marry me? When was the last time I rocked one of my children to sleep? When was the last time I actually enjoyed a sunset from the deck of a ship at sea? When was the last time I actually enjoyed just being an officer in the navy?

  As my attention finally turned back to the Oklahoma, I realized everything there was a mere shadow of what it used to be, almost as if stuck passing half of the way between existence in this world into some sort of ghostly nonexistence. And the shadows of the way the ship currently was began to grow in my mind, while the images in my mind of what the Oklahoma used to be dimmed and became engulfed totally by the shadows and were no more.

  The ghosts of the crew had left.

  I put my rusted gun in the bag provided by the chief, breathed a heavy sigh, and said to him “Let’s go.” We worked our way upwards until we came out of a hatch on the main deck, very near where I was when Chief Fitzgerald got killed. When I reached the top deck, I stood there and paused for awhile, looking back and forth across the deck, feeling somehow dazed and empty.

  “What are you looking for, captain?” the chief suddenly asked.

  “What am I looking for?” I said out loud, having been startled by the suddenness of his question. “What do you mean?”

  “What are you looking for, captain?” he repeated, looking straight back at me.

  A little bit startled again by the unexpectedness of the question, plus feeling a very deep stinging sensation stirring in my soul from the question, I replied, “Why do you ask, chief?”

  “Well, I’ve seen hundreds of crewmembers from the Oklahoma come back to this ship, and with an almost desperate expression, look around here for something, but none of them ever leave with anything more than what you have in that bag. And yet somehow, after telling me their story, they seem to feel better. It kind of makes me wonder if what you really came here looking for isn’t here on the Oklahoma but instead has been following you all along.”

  “Explain yourself, chief,” I said, losing a little patience with him. In those days it was rare, if not outright unacceptable, for an enlisted man to question any officer in this fashion, let alone a captain. Yet, there was something about him; I found I could not resist this old sailor’s questioning. And the question itself seemed to be burning deep within me.

  “Well, captain, you had to know what the oil and warm salt water would do to this ship and all of its contents. And you also had to have known there is nothing here of any tangible value to anyone anymore. There is nothing here on board except large piles of junk, and even the ship itself is nothing but scrap metal. So there is no sensible reason why you should have come back here, and yet, here you are, sir. Like so many of your shipmates before you.”

  I gave the chief a long, questioning look.

  Unflinching, he continued, “There is no more explanation for it, sir. Except to ask you, what are you looking for, captain?”

  I had plenty of duties as the skipper of the Buffalo, which were no doubt falling behind as I spent more time there. But somehow, standing there between the third and fourth turret of the Oklahoma, I felt I had to tell the chief about the attack. I went through the whole thing, exactly as I remembered, and told him every little detail. As I told him, we walked again through the same parts of the ship I had gone through during the attack. I held nothing back from the time of the meeting in the wardroom until I stepped off the ship into the harbor and showed him exactly where everything happened, including where and how Joe Fitzgerald died.

  Then I told him everything about being in the water and getting picked up by the boat while the attack still raged on around us. I also told him about the dispensary and the wounded coming in, the bomb in the courtyard, and the pretty nurse who was kind enough to put my stitches back in. And then there was the heroic run the Nevada made, and failed at, and the plight of the crew of the California as she sank, still tied to her berth and engulfed in burning fuel oil from the other battleships in the row.

  Something i
n my mind began to shift at that point, and I felt myself relax in a way I had not been able to since December of ‘41. The only way I can describe it is a huge weight which had been pressing unseen upon my spirit had lifted and disappeared.

  When I was done telling my story, we crossed the plank back to the dock and, being finished with our task, I handed him the hardhat, flashlight, and coveralls and put my own hat back on.

  “If you ever feel you need to visit the Oklahoma again or want to see anything else, just feel free to come back,” the chief said to me.

  “Thank you, chief, but I think I’m finished here.”

  “Thank you for your story, sir,” he replied with another sharp salute. Returning his salute I turned and walked away leaving the shadows of the battleship Oklahoma forever behind me.

  Later that evening, when I returned to the Buffalo, I decided to go down to the ship’s machine shop and work on my handgun. Such visits by the skipper might have been out of the ordinary on most ships, but the metal working tools on board were sufficient for the type of gunsmith work I was frequently doing to my Colt to keep it shooting the way I wanted it to. The crew had even set aside a tool box for me for the finer work on the triggers and such that I was continuously adjusting.

  On the radio in the background was a USO show featuring Bob Hope doing an “interview” with a “Japanese Ensign Hari Kari Isasyko, a veteran kamikaze pilot of forty seven missions…”

  As I worked at getting the pearl handgrips off of my old gun, I couldn’t help thinking about my visit to the Oklahoma earlier and that old chief. I wondered if he was a wise old man who probably knew I had a story to tell, and I had to tell it. How many of my other Oklahoma shipmates had told their stories to him?

  One thing I knew he was right about; it wasn’t nearly what I expected it to be.

  My chain of thoughts wandered back to that day in the wardroom before the Japs first attacked, and I found myself thinking of how our meeting went that morning. That kind of light-hearted joking around seemed to be a lot more frequent then, as compared to now. Maybe it was partly because of my promotion to captain, but even before that, there was a lot more seriousness because of the war. A lot of the men were willing enough to fight for their country, but many of them sorely wished to return home as well. “It’s a hard thing to miss your family,” I thought, “but we do still need to do what must be done.”

  While I was working to get the rusted screws off of the grips of my old gun, I thought back when I had first found it on the wreck of the Oklahoma. For a moment, I had dared to hope it would still be salvageable with the right tools. But the barrel and slide had become so pitted that the etching could no longer be read, and the barrel would most likely not be able to withstand the pressure of being fired. I knew there was nothing I could do but to clean and polish the grips and put them on my newer gun.

  I again recalled how angry Susan was when I had it engraved.

  God, I missed her and the kids. It suddenly struck me that James was now three and a half years old. “What had I missed?” I wondered. June was nine. Robert was seven. James was walking, I knew, because I had seen the pictures Susan had been sending. Potty trained? I didn’t know. Talking? I didn’t know that either. I wouldn’t even recognize the sound of his voice. How would he even know who I was?

  I had been so busy with the war that taking pictures to send home was rare and he was only a month old when I had sent them home to Ohio. I knew about things like June and Robert being in school and getting good grades from letters that Susan sent me, but other than that, who were my children really becoming? And when would I finally get to see them again?

  As I was finishing polishing the handgrips, the chief from the machinist crew came in and greeted me.

  “Captain, how are you tonight? Working on the Colt again?”

  Chief Jackson was on the Buffalo’s shooting team, which was urged on by me, even though the responsibilities of my rank no longer allowed me to participate. He was a good enough shot who really knew his way around the mechanics of the sport. He was also from the South and had somewhat of an accent to back it up. The crew called him “Stonewall,” supposedly because he was a direct descendent of the legendary Civil War general.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I visited my old ship, the Oklahoma, earlier today and managed to retrieve my old sidearm.”

  “Really? Does it still work?”

  “Not a chance,” I said, handing the rusted old Colt over to him to look at, “but I think the handgrips have cleaned up nicely.” As we continued talking, I unloaded my new forty-five and began to remove the stock wooden grips and replace them with the pearl ones.

  The chief whistled and said, “It sure looks like it was a nice one. It’s a shame. Are those grips pearl?”

  “Yes. I’m putting them on my new gun.”

  “It’s too bad about the rest of this old one,” he said, laying it on the workbench next to us.

  “Well, it’s in better shape than the ship I got it off of earlier today, or her crew for that matter. And I’m wondering about the former assistant gunnery officer.”

  “You were on board during the attack, sir?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Bad, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  After an awkward pause, he said, “Don’t worry, captain; I’m sure we’ll get the Japs back plenty enough by the end of this war.”

  “At this point in the war, I’m sure we will, Stonewall, but will it be worth it?”

  “This war is necessary, sir. What do you mean?” he said, with a cross between protest and surprise in his voice that was unusual for an enlisted man to use on his commanding officer.

  “I’m sure it is necessary for the United States, chief. And I’m sure for some reason, which we have yet to understand, when they attacked us, the Japs thought so as well. But I wonder, for the sake of all of us on both sides, if it’s worth it.

  “I have a wife and three kids, and one is a son who is three who I haven’t seen since he was a month old. Sure, it looks like we are winning the war right now, but it could still drag on for many more months, and a lot of men, even some more that we know, or even us for that matter, may never see our families again.”

  “To defend the freedom of those who are left, I suppose, it is worth it, captain,” he said.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Stonewall,” and as I slid my new Colt into my shoulder holster with its replaced grips, I said, “but there are some things from the past that are valuable that we need to hold on to. And maybe it’s just that I’m tired of being on ships that keep getting hit by torpedoes, but I also wonder if maybe we are still carrying some things that we should let go of.” I picked up the rusty Colt forty-five the chief had laid on the workbench and dropped it in the trash can.

  “It’s been a pleasure talking to you tonight, chief.”

  “And you too, sir,” he said as I left the room.

  As a crew, we tried our best to keep up with what was going on in the war, but healing the Buffalo’s wounds was a full-time task, and being out of action prevented us from being in a position of “needing to know.” Most of our information came in the form of the typical officially approved news reports and press releases.

  News of the continuing Kamikaze attacks and the progress of the Okinawa invasion dominated the news until that battle was eventually won. The fate of the feared battleship Yamato was greatly celebrated when the news made it back to us.

  There was a lot of traffic through the harbor as the United States made preparations for the inevitable invasion of mainland Japan. Or so we thought. But as you know, that never came to pass.

  By late July of ’45 we had been out of drydock for several weeks and were heavily involved in post-repair shakedowns and training. A lot of the crew had been replaced and was being brought up to speed. The order came for us to deploy to the Okinawa area and join the fleet in preparations to support the invasion of the Japanese mainland.

  While i
n route, the news came in about the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the impending Japanese surrender. During the time after the announcement and before the formal surrender, we were told to be on the lookout for renegade Japs who did not wish to surrender. Orders came in from Admiral Halsey that because of the sensitive nature of the surrender, and newly found peace between our nations, if we came upon any Japs not laying down their arms, to “kill them in a friendly fashion.” This was for political reasons, I guess.

  It was a few days after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki when I received the orders to proceed to a latitude and longitude that was somewhere to the southeast of Okinawa, to “find, rescue, and accept surrender from” a Jap submarine.

  The Buffalo and the destroyer assigned to escort us found them right where they were supposed to be. I checked my forty-five, just to be sure. This smelled of a time that I might have to use it.

  With extreme caution (to make sure this wasn’t some kind of ambush by a renegade sub captain), we approached them without incident. No sign of ships other than ours, no sonar contacts, and even better, no torpedo wakes.

  As we came around to tie up next to them I turned to Major Johnson and addressed him. Right at this time, most of his unit was placed at strategic points all over the port side of the Buffalo, armed with as many thirty- and fifty-caliber automatic weapons as they could hold. And several of the twenty-millimeter guns were trained on the sub as well.

  “Yes, sir?” The major asked.

  “You know the Jap customs?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want this to be perfectly clear, if just one of those Jap bastards even blinks wrong, I want you to cut that ship to ribbons. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said without hesitation or emotion of any kind that I could detect.

  I looked over my shoulder for the destroyer that was escorting us. It was right where it belonged.

  At least the sea was calm that day, not that it would do us any good, but maybe we could see any torpedo wakes in time to take some action.