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Not sure how we may have missed this at the time, but Jessie A. Mahaffey, a seaman on the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, passed May 1 at the age of 102.<\/p>\n
\nMahaffey joined the Navy in the summer of 1941 after graduating high school in Louisiana. After attending boot camp in San Diego, he was assigned to the Oklahoma.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOn the morning of the attack, he was preparing for an inspection when Japanese torpedo bombers attacked the Oklahoma, he told KTBS-TV in Shreveport in a Dec. 7 interview.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHe and five other sailors were scrubbing the battleship\u2019s wooden deck using abrasive holystones attached to broomsticks, he said.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Oklahoma was a Nevada-class battleship which sank in 45 minutes after being hit by five torpedoes in the attack. With 429 crew casualties, the Oklahoma is second only to the Arizona in casualty count.<\/div>\n\n\nJapanese planes immediately targeted the Oklahoma, and it was struck by three torpedoes within 10 minutes. As it began to capsize, two more torpedoes slammed into it, and crew members were strafed as they abandoned ship.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\u201cIt turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water,\u201d he recollected in the interview. He swam to and boarded the USS Maryland, which was moored beside the Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
You would think that would be enough excitement in one war for anyone, right?<\/div>\n\n\nMahaffey was later assigned to the cruiser USS Northampton, and he once again cheated death when it was sunk Nov. 30, 1942, during the Battle of Tassafaronga in the Solomon Islands.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nThe Northampton was part of a cruiser-destroyer force tasked with preventing Japanese reinforcements from reaching Guadalcanal. Two Japanese torpedoes ripped open the Northampton, and within three hours the crew was forced to abandon the sinking ship.\u00a0\u00a0Stars & Stripes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nAs of the time of the article in May, there was only one surviving Oklahoma survivor and by their count 14 Pearl Harbor survivors total. Seems to me we have lost a few others in the interim – it is a ‘band of brothers’ disappearing fast.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHat tip to my friend Oleg (maybe the smartest guy I know) for his post.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"