Russell Davenport died in 2001, according to switchboard.com. Davenport was one of many heroes who survived the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian islands. My interview with Davenport in his Sterling Heights home in 1989 is one of the most memorable conversations I can recall. His account was so amazing that I stopped taking notes shortly after he began speaking. I was spellbound, and discovered only later that my recorder had failed. I found that I didn’t need notes or a recording. Davenport had made such an impression that I remembered his account in detail. From the December 7, 1989 Detroit Free Press, in remembrance of the 2,402 Americans who died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, here is my story about Davenport’s experience aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma. Reprinted with permission of the Detroit Free Press:
28-HOUR ORDEAL FRESH FOR PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR
JOEL THURTELL
Free Press Staff Writer
PubDate: Thursday, 12/7/1989
Russell Davenport watched the Japanese planes grow from whining gnats to lethal machines weaving low between the bows of two anchored battleships.
Davenport, an 18-year-old bos’n mate, didn’t wait for the planes to drop their torpedoes into Pearl Harbor. He jumped through a hatch on the USS Oklahoma and raced to his battle station, a room 30 feet below the water line
where men handled bags of gunpowder for two of the Oklahoma‘s eight 14-inch guns.
Before Dec. 7, 1941, the Navy had judged Pearl Harbor’s 40-foot depth too shallow for torpedoes to strike. But Davenport remembers the sudden blare of a jukebox, jolted by the first torpedo hit. Water gushed into the 27,500-ton
battleship and within minutes, nearly a quarter of the Oklahoma‘s 1,354-man crew would die in the sneak attack.
When it was over, 3,435 Americans were killed or wounded, four battleships were sunk, four were badly damaged, and the U.S. Pacific fleet was crippled.
For Seaman 1C Davenport, now 66 and the retired owner of the Parakeet Bar on Detroit’s east side, the world was literally turned on its head. He and 31
other sailors clung to life for 28 hours in the warship’s foul, flooded and upturned belly.
The second torpedo hit just seconds after the first explosion, Davenport said.
“I counted them — there were six torpedoes that hit the port side within a minute of each other, ” recalled Davenport, of Sterling Heights.
The ship’s decks began to tip to the left. At his post in the ammunition room, there was chaos. Above, water rushed through huge holes along the side of the 583-foot ship. The decks tilted more sharply.
A 1,400-pound shell broke loose from its mount. Rolling crazily across the room, it pinned a sailor to the bulkhead, cutting him in two, Davenport said.
There was only one way out — through the deck. But as water filled the hull and the ship began to roll, up was becoming down.
A bunch of sailors fought through a deluge of water, forced themselves through a hatch and to the level above. As the ship pitched further left, several more giant shells rolled across the deck, crushing eight men.
The ship’s main lights went off. Red emergency lights came on. Sailors fell to their knees and prayed.
Now the ship was nearly upside-down. Above Davenport’s head was the floor.
Somewhere under the deep swirling water lay the ceiling.
Six inches of fuel oil covered the water.
Davenport and a buddy swam through the blackness. They made for the “Lucky Bag, ” a small room where pea jackets were stored. There was a vertical passageway there leading up — no, now it was down, some 40 feet to the
ship’s wood-slatted deck.
Davenport had a desperate plan — swim deep, squeeze through a deck hatch many feet below the water’s surface, and bob to the surface.
Davenport held his breath and dove repeatedly. He could just reach the teak deck slats with his fingers before he had to return for air, coming up gasping.
The 11 survivors in the Lucky Bag didn’t know it, but on shore, a shipyard worker was grabbing blueprints of the Oklahoma, organizing a rescue team.
In the ship’s belly, their luck seemed to be turning worse. The ship’s masts touched the muddy harbor bottom, then the entire top deck of the ship settled into the muck, blocking that as an escape route.
With the Japanese attack long over, the battleship lay silent, a tomb. Now and then, Davenport heard other trapped men rattling on the hull.
“Every little thing I done wrong in my life came back to me, ” recalled Davenport.
Nowhere to stand. Swim or tread water. Breathing air from foul-smelling bubbles. Gradually, air eased out. Water rose.
“We didn’t give up hope, ” said Davenport. “We hung in there and stayed with it.”
Outside, finally, sounds of help. A cutting torch pierced the hull but lit the fuel oil, suffocating two men in the opened compartment. Next time, they drilled a hole, banging a hole open with an air hammer.
After 28 hours, Davenport and 29 others were pulled out of the sunken battleship alive.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
