126 Killed in WWII Attack Are Honored : Dedication: New memorial in San Diego is the first at a national cemetery in America to honor those who died when a kamikaze pilot sank a ship.

Nick Nickless remembers the Japanese Zero diving directly for the flight deck of the St. Lo and the horror, death and bravery that followed.

“It was obvious to us he was trying to commit suicide,” said Nickless, 72, of Manchester, Mass. “He hit us hard and the explosion knocked everybody down.”

Doyle Hoffman was hurrying to his battle station when the first explosion struck. “Somebody hit me from the back and the two of us slid about 20 feet together,” said Hoffman, 69, of Sitka, Alaska.

The St. Lo’s gasoline and torpedoes set off a series of fiery explosions, hurling huge pieces of twisted metal hundreds of feet into the air as the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the largest, fiercest naval battle the world has ever known, raged on.

Within 28 minutes the St. Lo had sunk, the first American warship sent to the bottom of the sea by an unprecedented suicidal tactic called the kamikaze.

In a ceremony that brought tears to many of the several hundred St. Lo survivors and family members in attendance Monday, a memorial at Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery was dedicated to the 126 men killed aboard the St. Lo.

The ceremony came 50 years to the day after the sinking of the St. Lo marked the beginning of an extraordinary chapter in World War II, one that pitted Japanese pilots fighting to die against American sailors fighting to live.

The pilots had volunteered to crash their bomb-laden planes into American ships, inspired by the legend of the kamikaze (divine wind) that rescued Japan in the 13th Century from an invading Mongol emperor by destroying his fleet. Slow-moving, lightly defended escort carriers like the St. Lo were a favorite target.

Before the war ended 10 months later, kamikazes had sunk 35 American ships, damaged another 368, killed 4,900 U.S. sailors and wounded 4,800. About 3,000 kamikaze pilots died, many wearing their burial robes in expectation of achieving divine status.

Monday’s ceremony was a time for remembrance of the victims of the attacks.

“God bless the heroes of the USS St. Lo,” said Jerry Bowen, director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ national cemetery system.

Gus Benacka, 68, who was burned and temporarily blinded by the explosion, survived only because a shipmate risked his life to make sure Benacka was wearing a “Mae West” life preserver when the order came to abandon ship.

“To this day I don’t know who saved me” or whether he survived, said Benacka, of Phoenix. “I’m just grateful to God for what he did.”

Staring at the granite memorial inscribed with the names of the 126 dead, Lou Rodriguez, 73, of Monterey, Calif., pondered the imponderable question of war: why some men die and others survive. “You keep thinking: A lot better men than I went down with the ship,” he said.

The memorial to the St. Lo is the first monument at any of America’s 114 national cemeteries to those who died on a ship sunk by a kamikaze. A second memorial to kamikaze victims aboard the Ommaney Bay, which was sunk during the invasion of Luzon in January, 1945, will be dedicated at Ft. Rosecrans early next year.

There is a memorial in the Philippines to the St. Lo and other ships in its task force, but the survivors of the St. Lo decided several years ago that that was not good enough.

“The guys who died deserved something here in their own country,” said William C. Brooks, 74, of Mill Valley, Calif. Funds for the memorial were raised privately by an association of St. Lo survivors.

The St. Lo was among those ships assigned to keep the larger and better-armed Japanese ships from advancing toward the Philippine island of Leyte, where American troops had established an important beachhead.

Through a miscalculation, the main American fleet, under Adm. William (Bull) Halsey, had gone north several hundred miles, leaving the St. Lo and other smaller ships, led by Rear Adm. Clifton A. F. Sprague, to encounter the Japanese armada. The American victory off Samar Island is considered a turning point in the Pacific war.

In his 15-volume history of the Navy in World War II, Harvard professor Samuel Eliot Morison writes: “In no engagement in its entire history has the U.S. Navy shown more gallantry, guts and gumption than in those two morning hours off Samar.”

Commissioned in mid-1943 as the Midway, the St. Lo came through the battles for Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas unscathed. Its name was changed in the fall of 1944 by the War Department to St. Lo in honor of a breakout location after D-day.

The name change had upset many of the sailors, who believed in an old superstition that it is unlucky to change the name of a ship at sea. One chief petty officer even tried to transfer, feeling the ship was jinxed.

“We were all absolutely shocked that they would do something like that to a ship going into battle,” Nickless said.

Added Benacka: “It was considered as unlucky as bringing a woman aboard ship.”

Two weeks after the name change, the St. Lo was sunk. The date was Oct. 24 in the United States; Oct. 25 in the Philippines, across the international dateline.

Among those killed when the kamikaze crashed into the St. Lo was Lt. John A. Palmer, whose daughter, Patsy Palmer Williams, of Milwaukee, laid a wreath at the foot of the memorial Monday. She was 2 years old when the St. Lo was sunk.

“Your father was a great division officer,” said Buddy Barnes, 73, of Annapolis, Md., as he tearfully embraced Williams. “We owe our lives to him,” said Rodriguez.

The person who sank the St. Lo was an experienced fighter pilot, unlike many kamikazes who were teen-agers barely able to fly. His timing was impeccable: The St. Lo was refueling and arming its planes, the most vulnerable time for a carrier.

“He was the luckiest kamikaze pilot in the fleet, and we were the unluckiest ship,” said Benacka. Seven hundred fifty-four crewmen were rescued from the water.

As they bobbed up and down in the gasoline-laden sea waiting hours to be rescued, St. Lo survivors took heart that the ship’s flag was still flying even as it slipped beneath the sea.

“We never surrendered,” Nickless said. “We fought to the very end.”