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By Al Zdon
Everyone knows about the first Pearl Harbor tragedy, but few know about the second one.
"I tell people all the time that I was at the second Pearl Harbor,
but they just look at me strangely," said Bernie Bredesen, a Navy veteran from World War II. "They've never heard of it, even the historians."
But there was a second Pearl Harbor calamity. It happened
two-and-one-half years after the Japanese attack on the U.S. forces in Hawaii, and it resulted in a large loss of life and the destruction of many naval vessels.
Why has such an incident disappeared
from our national memory of the war – even for historians? Mainly, because the incident on May 21, 1944, was hushed up by the government as not being favorable to the war effort.
While it is not
a secret now, the incident, usually called the "West Loch Disaster," remains one of the least known incidents of the war.
Bernie Bredesen, now 93, remembers it well.
"We had finished
loading the ammunition, and so there wasn't much to do aboard the ship. The engine had been secured. And so we got a bat and a kitten ball and we headed over to the sand dunes. We were just taking turns
batting the ball into the air and then trying to catch it."
Bredesen was a motor machinist mate second class on the USS Waters, a World War I four-stacker destroyer that had been converted into a
troop carrying ship called an APD. His main job was to run the forward throttle on ship, but when landing operations were at hand he was in charge of making sure the engine was running well on one of the
ship's four landing boats.
The Waters was tied up with two other destroyers in West Loch, one of the bays in Pearl Harbor. This particular bay was used to assemble fleets for a future battle. In this
case, ships, ammunition, fuel, food, men and other stores were being gathered in West Loch for the invasion of Saipan.
"We got tired of chasing that ball and so we took a break. There were a bunch of
Army guys over there running tanks and alligators (amphibious tanks) on the beach. They were just servicing them, changing the oil and making sure their tanks were full. So we went over and talked with
them."
While they were talking, Bredesen noticed the flashes and sparks from a welding torch on the deck of one of the LSTs nearby. The Navy had clustered 29 of the landing craft together to get them
ready for Saipan.
"From what I've read, nobody knows what started the explosions," Bredesen said. "But I know. They were welding brackets on the deck to hold the aviation gas in those 55-gallon
drums."
Bredesen says welding torches and drums of gasoline don't create a very safe situation. It was 3:08 p.m.
"LST 353 was the first one to blow. The other LSTs were side-by-side. When one blew
up it rained the debris down on the one next to it and blew up the gas drums and ammunition on that one. It was just like dominos, one after another."
An LST, or Landing Ship – Tank, is not
small. They are 327 feet long and 50 feet wide and they have a crew of about 110 men and officers.
On the decks of each ship were thousands of gallons of gas — and crates and crates of
ammunition. Plus, the ship had its own fuel tank that held over 200,000 gallons.
The explosions were monumental. "We just started running back towards the ship."
On his way, Bredesen heard what
sounded like a scream. "I went up on top of a dune, and there was this guy screaming at the top of his voice. I looked at him, and there was nothing left from the belt down. Nothing at all. I went over
to him, but there wasn't anything I could do. While I was standing there, he died, the poor devil."
Badly shaken, Bredesen rejoined his mates in their headlong dash back to the Waters, anchored about
a half mile away.
"As I was running I could hear this whistling, this loud whistling in the air, like a rocket." Bredesen eased up on his running for just a second, and an object passed by his ear and
cut into his shoe before burying itself in the ground.
"If I hadn't hesitated, it would have hit me right in the head. It was coming straight down and it couldn't have missed my head by more than an
inch."
Curious to know what the object was, Bredesen got down on his knees in the sand. "I was digging just like a dog. I had to know what it was. I pulled it out of the sand, and it was this metal
ring, about two inches across. It was so hot, that I had to toss it from one hand to another all the way back to the ship. When it finally cooled off, I put it in my pocket."
Back on the ship, things
were moving fast. The LSTs that had been nested together across the loch were now blasted free of their moorings and they were slowly being pushed toward the destroyers by the wind. Many were on
fire.
"We had just brought all this ammunition on board, and we began throwing it in the water. The ship was trying to get its boilers going so we could get underway."
And then, in Bredesen's
estimation, a miracle happened. The wind began blowing from the opposite direction, and began blowing the fiery LSTs back across the bay. The Waters and the other ships seemed to be safe.
"I remember
there were fire boats going in and out trying to put out the fires. The water would be burning in one place and not in another place."
Earlier in the day, Bredesen's landing boat had been put in the
water to go get the mail and some ship's stores. He now noticed that it was gone.
"I looked out and I saw my close friend Bernard Peppin out in my boat rescuing sailors from the water. He would drag
them on board, and then take them into shore. Those Army guys were there with their alligators, and they would drive these guys from the beach over to the highway nearby, and they would flag down cars
and have them take them to the hospital. I don't know how many he saved that day."
Peppin was also a Minnesota boy, growing up on White Bear Avenue in St. Paul. He and Bredesen had been fast
friends ever since they both reported aboard the Waters in February of 1943.
"Bernie told me that he was trying to pull one guy aboard and all he ended up with were four of the guy's fingers. They
were burned so badly that they just came off. He did get the guy on board and to the hospital, though."
The West Loch Disaster took a frightening toll. Six LSTs were blown apart and many others were
damaged. In all, 163 men were killed and another 396 were wounded that day.
It was one of the worst accidents of the war.
But the war went on. The disaster only delayed the invasion of Saipan by
one day. In all, the USS Waters took part in 13 landings during the war.
Bredeson said the West Loch Disaster had one interesting final chapter for his friend Peppin. The two had stayed in touch after
the war, and Peppin, who died several years ago, told him this story.
"He was a machinist, and his company sent him to Atlanta to do a job. This was about 30 years after the war. He completed the job,
and was in the airport waiting to go home. He noticed that this one fellow kept staring at him. Bernie would hide behind his newspaper, but every time he looked up, the guy was staring at
him.
"Finally the guy got up and came over to Bernie. He asked him if he had been in the Navy during the war. Bernie said yes. He asked if he had been at Pearl Harbor in 1944. And Bernie said yes. And
then the guy asked if Bernie had driven a boat around rescuing people in West Loch.
"At that point, the guy took his hands out of his pockets and he didn't have any hands, only two hooks. It was the
same guy that Bernie had pulled out of the water. Well, they hugged and talked, and, needless to say, neither one of them made their flights that night. They remained close friends until they
died.
"Bernie told me that the guy had told him, 'When I was in that boat I kept looking at the guy who was going around rescuing people. I said that one day I would find him again and thank him. It
took all these years, but I did.'"
Bredesen still has the piece of metal that nearly took his head off. He framed it, and it hangs from a wall in his home in Bloomington, part of the Masonic Home
complex. He thinks the ring was part of a gasoline drum.
It's an odd souvenir, but it's a little bit of tangible proof for the doubters who don't think there was a second disaster at Pearl
Harbor.
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