A beautiful morning lends itself to a relaxing start to the day, so Jeffrey “Jack” Parks, then 20 in 1941, went to the back of the ship, sat on the stern and opened the Honolulu Advertiser Sunday morning edition.
The tide rolled across the surface, and across the ocean waters was the island where the USS Dobbin’s former commanding officer and acting captain had disappeared about four months before.
Parks no longer remembers the name of the lost captain (Commander Thomas Latimore), but he remembers the commanding officer stepping onto the captain’s gig, dog in tow, riding to the island to hike in the Aiea Mountain Range overlooking the Harbor.
It was the commander’s tradition, a calm way to spend a quiet peace-time day with the smell of the ocean carried by the Hawaiian breeze drifting through the dark green, oval leaves of the ‘Aiea trees.
Earlier that year, in July, the commander didn’t make it back to the gig.
The Marines and local authorities searched for several days, probably first for the man, then for his body, but they never found him. Parks, too, was sent out in a search party for two days. As a hospital corpsman, his skills would have been invaluable had they found an injured commanding officer, but there was no need, and Parks was sent back to the USS Dobbin.
Life at Pearl Harbor went on without the commanding officer.
A new captain and commanding officer was assigned, and the peaceful nights of music (popular that year were Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Sammy Kaye and Freddy Martin, each with their orchestra) and card games aboard ship again embraced Parks and the 600-man crew assigned to the destroyer tender that was the Dobbin.
Parks flipped a page of the Sunday Advertiser, enjoying the sun and the serene morning. Clouds were over the mountains, but the skies were clear over the Harbor.
The commanding officers had their families living ashore and spent most of their time on dry land. Parks, though he was making 10 percent more through overseas pay — Hawaii was not yet a state — was making only $54-60 per month and had to pick and choose his times to enjoy the island life.
The paper, the water, the sun — sure, he rarely left the ship, and his bunk was in the sickbay where he worked — they made for a nice day. It was shortly before 8 a.m.
A good time to be awake.
A plane prop could be heard faintly whirring on the other side of Ford Island, a dry surface in the middle of Pearl Harbor.
The aircraft held low, nearly skimming the water. It was approaching from Pearl City to the west.
Parks assumed it was a friendly aircraft making a practice run in the Harbor.
It wasn’t until the torpedo fell off the plane and the wings dipped, showing the insignia of a red sun as the plane banked away, that Parks realized his beautiful morning on Dec. 7, 1941, was set to “live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt would later say.
Jumping ship
The Empire of Japan launched two waves of attacks on Pearl Harbor beginning at about 7:45 a.m. with more than 350 aircraft combined.
More than 180 planes took part in the first wave, including 140 torpedo planes, 49 bombers, 51 dive bombers and 43 fighters.
The second wave was 170 planes — 54 bombers, 80 dive-bombers and 36 fighters.
In the middle of the ensuing chaos was a young Kansas man who had earned his nickname from a donkey.
Parks grew up on a farm. His parents had a hired hand to help with operations, in those days the land was worked with horses and mules rather than tractors.
One day when Parks was a baby, the hired hand named him after the mule.
“He said, ‘That kid,’ meaning me, ‘has big long ears, just like our mule, Jack,’ ” Parks says. “Consequently, I got the name Jack, named after that mule — it stuck.”
Parks enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 12, 1939, and was assigned to the old naval hospital at Pearl Harbor in March 1940.
A year later, he was assigned to the USS Dobbin.
Far from the farm, with newspaper in hand, he watched the torpedo rush through the water on a straight path toward a cruiser, the USS Raleigh, on the west side of Ford Island as the plane flew away from the damage it was about to inflict.
When it hit, there was no question what had happened.
“I saw the cruiser jump out of the water,” Parks says.
Parks wasn’t the only serviceman to see the jumping ship, and the Dobbin sounded fire, rescue and general quarters (battle stations). Parks went to his station in the sickbay, waiting for the injured and dead to arrive — and waiting for the battle to end.
Three ships were lost entirely that day, but the Dobbin, tied to five destroyers — Worden, Hull, Phelps, Macdonough and Dewey, each named after a deceased distinguished American — saw three near-misses.
While those near-misses hadn’t damaged the Dobbin, they did claim three lives — three of the total 2,403 casualties, leaving a round number of 2,400 shared between the other ships and those on land, Navy, Army, Marines and civilians.
Arizona
The Dobbin didn’t take a direct hit.
“We had five destroyers tied up,” Parks says. “The Dobbin wasn’t well armed, but the five destroyers had a lot of gun fire and they were more prepared and they possibly gave us protection.”
The near-misses created shrapnel, and the shrapnel created wounds.
Those wounds could range from broken limbs to missing limbs. Missing limbs meant shock.
When vital organs are deprived of blood, the body goes into shock. The patient could lose consciousness, could have fast breathing, could feel weak or be unable to stand, could be less alert or confused, restless or fearful.
Shock can end a patient’s life — it means the body is shutting down.
More than 1,100 U.S. personnel were wounded during the attack, and on the scene was Parks, doing his job as a hospital corpsman.
“I was scared, sure, but you had to work,” Parks said. “When a guy comes down with his leg blown off, you put a tourniquet on it and try to treat him for shock.”
They’d put the man in a bunk, keep him warm and treat him with morphine.
Though hard at work in the sickbay, Parks says he could hear it all — every torpedo strike, every exploding ship.
At sea beyond the sickbay windows, plumes smoldered into the sky, towers of black over bright blue water.
At one point, Parks opened the hatch to the sickbay, either to take somebody in or to catch a glimpse of the battle beyond the hospital bunks. At that moment, he witnessed the USS Arizona explode. That single explosion just to his south along Battleship Row, and the suffocating rush of the ocean overcoming the ship as it sank, claimed more than 1,100 lives alone.
Back in sickbay, the chaos continued.
“It was bedlam,” Parks says. “It’s hard to explain. There were so many things going on. We took care of what we had to take care of.”
The injured from other ships were brought to the Dobbin and Parks kept working.
Lingering
The attack lasted 90 minutes.
In total all eight battleships were damaged and four were sunk. The USS Arizona remains at the bottom of the Harbor but the other three were raised. Six of the ships carried out operations throughout the remainder of the war.
Seven other ships were hit including three destroyers, three cruisers and a training ship.
In the sickbay on the Dobbin, the three casualties were sewn in canvas, their tags attached to the outside. Where they were sent from the ship, Parks doesn’t know, but eventually they were buried with the other casualties in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu.
And though the attack was over in less than two hours, the aftereffects lingered.
“You just lived in fear all day, practically,” Parks said. “I did.”
That evening, a plane was en route from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, looking to land.
The remaining crew at Pearl Harbor manned the guns, filled the sky with tracers and downed the pilot with friendly fire.
“They were trigger happy,” Parks said.
Rumors were rampant after the airstrike. Was another attack coming? Did the government have advanced knowledge of the attack?
Even the circumstance of the missing commanding officer of the Dobbin was subject to speculation after the attack — was he taken by Japanese spies? Was he made aware of the impending airstrike and did he decide to leave before the destruction?
After the attack
The next day, allowed one letter without a description of the attack and subject to censorship, Parks sent a note home to his family:
“Dear Folks —
“You know we had a little trouble over here. Nothing I can say, but I’m OK, so far as I know. Pretty sure Babe (a friend from Kansas) is. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me because no news is good news.
“Lots of love
“Jack”
The site of the attack is marked by the USS Arizona Memorial on the island of Oahu.
After Pearl Harbor, Parks spent time in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Australia, and he was at sea between Okinawa, Japan, and Ulithi when the atomic bombs were dropped.
He was discharged after six years of service in November 1945, having taken part in both what is considered the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II and what is considered the end.
After the war, Parks worked in parts and sales at car dealerships in Kansas and Oklahoma before retiring to Arizona.
Some eight years ago, Parks, now 93, and Laura Lee, 92, his wife of 60 years, moved to Hoquiam so they could be closer to his son living in Tokeland.
Their home is clean and they have a fluffy cat. Parks drives a Toyota, and his license plates denote his status as a Pearl Harbor survivor.
“You had to prove that you were there to get those tags,” Parks said. “Once in a while, people will notice it and mention it.”
The couple also have a daughter, and three grandchildren.
Parks was a member and the Arizona state chairman of the Pearl Harbor Association before it disbanded in 2013 due to “a lack of people living.”
He’s been back to Pearl Harbor a couple of times, mostly for association gatherings.
Dec. 7 is not a national holiday, but still it’s known as “Pearl Harbor Day” and flags are flown at half-staff for the fallen.
However, dwelling on the past — that’s not how Parks has lived his life.
“I don’t carry a grudge,” he said as the nation marks 73 years since the attack. “I had friends who did, but I don’t carry any grudge about it.”
For the most part, life has gone on unimpeded, and his time of service was without many other near-misses.
“I never did get hurt in the war — the only thing I ever got was a cold,” Parks says. “I spent a lot of days at sea, but never in trouble at sea. My biggest trouble was at Pearl Harbor.”
Corey Morris, a Daily World writer, can be reached at 537-3936, or by email at cmorris@thedailyworld.com
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