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Pearl Harbor survivor recalls ‘day of infamy’

Pearl Harbor survivor recalls ‘day of infamy’

Canton man lived through the attack to fight in three wars

by Vicki Hyatt

Staff writer, The Enterprise Mountaineer

 

Canton -- Robert Fulbright remembers the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing at Pearl Harbor as if it were yesterday.

           The 82-year-old Canton resident, who spent 31 years in the U.S. Navy, is one of the few to rise to the rank of commander without attending officer candidate school. On that fateful day in 1941, Fulbright recalls, he was changing clothes aboard the U.S.S. California at 7:55 a.m., getting ready for church.

           “A torpedo hit straight below me,” he recalled. “Then came the announcement ‘General Quarters. This is no drill.’ That meant to go to your battle stations.”

           For Fulbright, the battle station included climbing to the highest point on the ship--a lookout station on the forward mast.

           “Nine of use climbed that ladder. Only two lived,” he said.

           Fulbright and a man from Texas he knew only as “Sweetwater,” because of the town he came from, were left in the “tub,” a 10-by-12-foot enclosure where they were on look-out duty, searching for shells and reporting hits to the main battery.

           All nine sailors made it safely to the tub, but they found they had no ammunition for the machine gun. Seven left to get it, but never returned, Fulbright said.

           “There we were with no weapons. We couldn’t even throw a spud at them,” he recalled.

           The battleship, which was about half a mile from shore, took steady firing for two hours and 10 minutes before the abandon ship siren sounded. The ship had taken so many torpedo hits, it could no longer stay afloat. Luckily, the crew was able to control the way the ship sank by opening opposing flood gates, which ensured the ship sank down straight to the bottom, Fulbright said.

           Oil flowed out of the damaged battleship and the heavy fire turned the water into a blaze.

           “Sweetwater and I decided to just stay where we were and see what happened,” he said.

           It was 2:30 p.m. before the tub reached a level where the pair needed to make the choice of going down with their ship or jumping into the ocean of fire and attempting to swim to shore.

           As if by fate, a fire boat happened by and put out a patch of fire, allowing Fulbright and Sweetwater to swim to shore. The crew members on the USS California were luckier than seamen on other battleships hit that fateful day. About 270 of the USS California crew members were killed, compared to the USS Arizona which was blown up and lost most of its members, or the USS Oklahoma, which capsized, he said.

           Fulbright was shot through his calf at Pearl Harbor, but the bullet hit no bone and made a clean exit.

           “The hospital was full of tore-up people, especially with burns, so I decided not to bother,” he said. “I found a gallon can of kerosene, and Sweetwater and I healed it.”

           The attack on U.S. forces stationed at Pearl Harbor left the surviving sailors without ships and without ammunition.

           “If they would have come back, they could have taken out all of us,” Fulbright said. “The island was full of wounded sailors and we didn’t have so much as a .22 pistol.”

 

Attack no surprise

           Americans were outraged by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it was this event that galvanized U.S. action to become openly involved in WWII. While most Americans were flabbergasted by the attack, Fulbright said those at the naval base were expecting it.

           “It was no surprise to sailors on the USS California,” he said. “We had been practicing for weeks and had seen Japanese submarines a week before the hit. We knew it was coming but didn’t know when. Washington (officials) knew when it was coming.”

           President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew from British intelligence when Pearl Harbor would be attacked, Fulbright alleged. Roosevelt also wanted to become involved in the war, but didn’t have the popular support or the support of Congress, he said.

           But even if Washington would have warned the commanders at Pearl Harbor of the date and time of the attack, it would not have made much difference, he reflected.

           “If our fleet would have met them head on, we would have lost,” he said. “Their ships were superior. We were wide open to attack and there was no place for use to go. We lost less lives there at Pearl where men could swim to shore.”

           Fulbright’s next assignment was on a tug boat where his job was to circle the island of Hawaii, waving the U.S. flag and searching for spots where Japanese submarines could get fuel and supplies. Any irregularities were reported to Pearl Harbor. He spent a year in Hawaii before being sent back to the states, where he was assigned to another ship, a small aircraft carrier called the Natoma Bay (CVE) 62. He served as leading petty officer and went through many battles on the ship, which became the most decorated ship in the U.S. Navy during WWII.

           Fulbright recalls the battle of Leyte in the Philippines where “we turned the Jap fleet around with six to eight of them little devils.” They thought they had run into the main force and that’s why they turned around.”

           The ship was only hit badly on one occasion when a suicide plane dove through the deck and killed one man.

           Fulbright remained on the ship until January 1946, after the war ended.

 

A naval career

           His naval experience during WWII led Fulbright to stay the course, and he eventually worked his way up to the rank of commander before retiring with 31 years of service. He served during three wars, including Korea where he flew planes and Vietnam, when his ship was charged with bringing food and supplies to the fleet off the Indochina coast. Fulbright said he enlisted in the Navy in 1939, within a week of Hitler taking Poland.

           “I knew Hitler was going to cause a world war,” he said. “It was so obvious. I didn’t want to get drafted into the Army. I wanted three meals a day and a bed at night. That didn’t happen in the Army or the Marines, either.”

           The appeal of the Navy never waned but once, when he decided to retire after putting in 20 years. He was talked out of the notion with a promotion offer too good to refuse. Ironically, he ended his naval career also on Dec. 7, 1970.

           Through the years, Fulbright married three times. His first wife, the mother of his four children, “turned hippie” on him, he said. His second wife, a Sylva native who drew him to the mountains of Western North Carolina where the couple planned to build their dream house, died of cancer before the house was finished.

           He met his current wife, the former Caroline Ensley of Candler, who he calls “Foxy Granny,” while doing a favor for his cousin.

           “I always had a good time,” he said. “The way I look at it, if you woke up every morning, the previous day was good.”

 

[Editor’s note:  Thanks to Caroline Fulbright for sending this article. She writes, “Bob is doing fairly well, he has had more eye surgery this summer, and some days are better than others for him to see....We will be moving off the mountain here into Canton to a condo we have bought. We plan to move before the last of Oct. (2002), and I will send you our new address in Asheville, N.C., which is not very far from here [1603 Hyde Park Dr., Asheville, N. C. 28806]. Bob & Caroline E. Fulbright” We sure hope we see “Commander” Bob and Caroline at the Lake Junaluska reunion!]