When the Japanese attacked the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, Baker 3rd Class Dale Augerson had just put a batch of apple pies in the oven aboard the battleship USS West Virginia. The battleship was moored at “Battleship Row,” together with most of the fleet’s other capital ships.
Vernon Olsen, 91 — who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor aboard the battleship USS Arizona, swam away from the carrier USS Lexington as it was sinking during the Battle of the Coral Sea months later, and took part in the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests after the war — died Friday, April 22,…
Jerry Hemphill served aboard the USS Missouri as a Japanese intercept operator. He was the first American to intercept the official code from Tokyo that the emperor was calling it quits. World War II was almost over.
War Tales 