Summary
Ray Daves lied about his age to join the Navy in 1938 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor by December 1941. His firsthand account of the attack combines the gravity of that day with glimpses of the humor and grace that defined his character. His story includes one of the most touching examples of small-town America’s response to the war.
Key Takeaways
- Ray was awake early on December 7, 1941, having just finished a double shift in the radio room at Pearl Harbor
- He spent the attack on the roof of the administration building, hauling ammunition for a machine-gun crew
- After the attack, he sent a postcard home marked “Alive, not wounded”
- The postcard arrived weeks later, after his Arkansas town had believed him dead
- The postcard’s arrival revealed how closely Ray’s Arkansas town had been watching and waiting
A Young Sailor Joins Up
I initially read The Radioman years ago, and it has one of the best firsthand descriptions of Pearl Harbor that I have seen. I even had my daughter read it as part of our homeschool curriculum. While Ray’s humor is frequent in the book and his good nature shines through, his summary of the attack is, of course, very serious. Still, I just had to include the story about the post office at the end. It is so quintessentially small-town America.
Ray Daves lied about his age to join the Navy in 1938. He was accepted, but there weren’t any slots available until the spring of 1939. He was assigned to attend radio school from May to August in 1940, then stationed at Pearl Harbor.
The Morning of December 7, 1941
On December 6, 1941, Ray worked two shifts in the radio room at Pearl. He got off work at 4 a.m. and went to his barracks to catch some shut-eye. However, he forgot to pull the shade, so the sun woke him at 6:30 a.m. on December 7, 1941.
On Sundays, breakfast was pancakes. He headed to the mess hall.
“I could smell the bacon and the maple syrup from the sidewalk. My hand was on the door to the mess hall when I heard the plane engines. It sounded like a lot of them, all coming from the direction of the fuel tanks behind the barracks. They were flying way too low. Whoever they were, those pilots were in serious trouble. It didn’t matter if they were Army, Navy, or Marines. Every one of them was going to get chewed out and probably grounded for violating the restricted airspace over the submarine base complex. I was just curious to see who they were.
As they passed overhead, the whole formation banked in unison toward Ford Island. That’s when I saw their markings. They weren’t ours.
I saw the lead plane drop its bomb, and I heard the first explosion.”
Ray was entering the administration building to report to his battle station when he looked up and saw a whole formation flying exceptionally low. They had to divide up to fly around the building, and each had a torpedo hanging from its belly.
They were headed to Battleship Row.
When he arrived at the radio room, the commander put the older, more experienced men on the radios. Ray asked what he was to do, and the commander told him to go to the roof.
The engine noise was deafening as he climbed the ladder.
When he arrived on the roof, he found two men had set up a thirty-caliber machine gun. One was firing, and one was feeding ammunition. They turned to him and yelled, “More ammunition!”
Ray ran to the storage shed on the opposite side of the roof. The door was hanging open, so the other men must have broken off the padlock. Ray grabbed two canisters of ammo and carried them across the roof. Later, he wasn’t sure how he did it, because they probably weighed fifty pounds each.
He dropped the ammo canisters, then watched the torpedo planes. He watched the wakes of the torpedoes head toward the battleships.
“I didn’t know one battleship from another, but the two sailors beside me sure did. When we saw one battleship turn over and sink upside down, they both shouted out, ‘There goes the Oklahoma!’ Another battleship was exploding. I could actually feel the concussions—it was like a small earthquake—and the man next to me was yelling, ‘That’s the Arizona!’ I thought I was going to be sick. I doubled over and dropped to my knees, and all I could say was ‘No! Oh, no!’ The Arizona was a giant fireball. I couldn’t imagine how George or anyone else on that ship might have survived.”
George was one of his best friends from radio school.
“I wanted to stay on my knees and pray for my friend, but there was no time: the gun was almost out of ammunition.”
They continued firing at every plane that came within range. He wasn’t sure how many planes were in the air, but he didn’t think it was ever less than twenty. In addition to the torpedo planes, there were bombers and fighters (Zeros). The fighters had machine guns, and they were strafing anything that moved.
“They were even firing on the rescue boats that were trying to pick up the sailors who got blown off their ships. And then I saw the plane that was flying straight at me.”
He pointed it out to the men with him, and they fired at it. Several other guns were firing at it too. Its engine burst into flames about 200 yards from the administration building, but it kept coming toward them.
“It was less than fifty yards away when I saw the canopy was thrown back, so I knew the pilot was preparing to bail out. As the plane got closer, I saw why he did not. That Japanese pilot was dead. I thought it was probably our gun that killed that Japanese pilot. If so, it wasn’t my finger on the trigger. All I did was bring the ammunition. But I still felt bad when I looked into the cockpit and saw his face. For a couple of seconds, I forgot that he was the enemy. At that moment, he was just some mother’s son, same as me, and somebody was going to have to go back to Japan and tell that poor woman her boy died.”
Then Ray saw another plane flying toward them. It flew to the harbor and took aim at the liberty boats that were ferrying men who had been on leave back to their ships. There were six or seven boats, each with around thirty men—all unarmed and trying to get back to their ships. The pilot opened up his machine guns and Ray saw the men fall into the water, blood pooling around them in the ocean. One boat was still intact, and one man shook his fist at the pilot, who then strafed him.
“That’s when I lost it. For the first time that morning, I was more angry than I was afraid. I was ready to go to war.”
The smoke was thick, and fuel was burning on the water. More explosions hit. The dry docks were in flames.
“The three of us stayed on the roof of the administration building until there were no more planes to shoot at, and then we just stood there for a few minutes in case more came.”
Finally, the men left the roof.
Coming Home on Leave
Ray served in the Pacific and got his first leave in September and October of 1942. First he went to see his girl in Spokane. He called Adeline early the morning he arrived, and she promised to meet him in an hour. She was late. Just before Ray gave up and left, a car screeched around the corner and stopped in a loading zone. Adeline jumped out, crying, saying something about too many trains.
“I didn’t care about trains. I just wanted her to stop crying.”
Ignoring all the people around them, he kissed her and she kissed him back. They went to breakfast, but unfortunately, they left her car in the loading zone. When they returned, there was a ticket on the windshield.
Ray went to the courthouse and asked the judge if he could “give a poor sailor a break and reduce the fine, just this once.”
The judge said, “Well, no. Can’t do that.” Then he tore up the ticket and thanked Ray for his service.
Ray stayed with Adeline’s family for a week, then went to see his own family in Arkansas.
He spent most of his time on his parents’ farm, but he did go into the nearest small town a few times. Whatever he did, his money was “no good.” He didn’t buy a single hamburger or Coke the entire time. It was always on the house.
It was only after he arrived home that he learned the entire town had thought he was dead for several weeks after Pearl Harbor.
“The day the postcard I filled out arrived in town, the postmaster pulled down the shades and locked the door and delivered it himself. Nobody had ever seen him drive that fast. My sister said she saw this big cloud of dust come up the lane, and he jumped out hollering and waving that postcard, yelling, ‘He’s all right! He’s all right!’”
Ray made a special trip to the post office to thank the postmaster.
Life After the War
Ray served until the end of the war and then married Adeline. He found his experience on an aircraft carrier to be excellent training for his civilian career as an air traffic controller. They had two children, but one died of cancer at the age of forty.
“That was an awful blow to the whole family, especially her husband and children, but the Bible says I’ll see her again in heaven, and I do believe that.”
In 2007, Ray and Adeline celebrated their sixty-third wedding anniversary. Ray said that to him, she was still as beautiful as the day he met her. They had five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Ray Daves died in 2011, at the age of ninety-one.
