Robert D. West, 82; Rescued From Ship at Pearl Harbor

Robert D. West, who was among 32 men rescued from the bottom of the capsized battleship Oklahoma after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was aboard the battleship Massachusetts when it pounded Japan at the end of World War II, has died. He was 82.

West, who for many years owned West Interiors, a carpet and drapery business in West Covina, died Jan. 14 at his home in San Juan Capistrano.

He suffered from emphysema, and the likely cause of death was lung cancer, his family said.

When West’s seven daughters were growing up after the war, their soft-spoken, dry-witted father never talked to them about the nearly 30 hours he spent entombed in the Oklahoma after it was struck by Japanese torpedoes and capsized.

But when he discussed his experience in a 1966 interview with Life magazine for an issue marking the 25th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, they finally understood why their father always slept with a small light on.

“They had been trapped in pitch darkness, and I think that [memory] never totally left him,” said West’s daughter, Diane, of Corona del Mar.

Born in Chicago in 1920, West was 2 when his father died. He and his mother went on relief and moved in with West’s grandmother, who later taught him to play the piano.

By the time the Depression hit, West’s mother had remarried. West’s stepfather was a sign painter and occasional saxophonist who taught the boy to play the instrument.

In 1937--at 17--West dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy.

Two years later, West, a musician second class, was aboard the cruiser Raleigh, which operated in and out of Pearl Harbor.

West, however, cared neither for the high cost of beer in Honolulu nor the way the locals treated sailors.

So during the summer of 1941, amid rumors that battleships would be returning to the West Coast, he received permission to trade jobs with a sailor on the Oklahoma.

But with growing tension between the United States and Japan, the battleships remained in Pearl Harbor. On that infamous Sunday morning in December 1941, West and 21 other band members were assembled on the Oklahoma’s main deck preparing to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the raising of the colors at 8 a.m.

They never played.

About 7:55, as West recalled in a reminiscence he wrote for the USS Arizona Memorial, he noticed a swarm of planes coming in high off the port side of battleship row.

Thinking that the planes were conducting maneuvers, West commented to a colleague that he didn’t realize they had so many aircraft in the area. When one of the planes dropped a bomb on Ford Island, West said to his shipmate, “That sure looks like the real McCoy.”

Then a fast, low-flying plane dropped a bomb on the minelayer Oglala on the other side of the channel. At the same moment that the Oglala seemed “to fold like an accordion from bow to stern,” a voice came over the Oklahoma’s loudspeaker ordering all hands to their battle stations.

As the men scattered in different directions, West took off for his battle station--a damage control unit in the carpenter shop on the third deck below.

West, according to the Life magazine account, had only recently been transferred to that station--as punishment after being caught playing a card game called acey-deucy during a practice General Quarters drill.

The transfer saved his life: Everyone manning his former battle station was killed during the first minutes of the attack.

The first torpedo ripped into the Oklahoma just as West finished tightening the latches on the watertight door leading to the carpenter shop compartment.

The explosion caused the ship to immediately list to port. Seconds later, another torpedo hit, making the vessel list so much that a fellow sailor had to toss West a line so he could pull himself up to get to the high side of the compartment.

By the time the ship had been hit by two more torpedoes, West and about a dozen men were in a passageway leading out of the carpenter shop. A fifth, then a sixth, torpedo hit, and the ship was now listing at least 90 degrees.

“One more hit,” West said to the young sailor in front of him, “and we’re going over.”

When a seventh torpedo hit, the ship rolled over and, West recalled, “the water rushed in like a flood. To the knees, the waist, the neck, to having to tread water and suddenly [the water went] no higher. The Okie had capsized and settled in the mud of the harbor and left us with about a foot of air space.”

About half of the group had already left the passageway through a hatch that had not been closed.

But West and the other four remaining sailors could no longer see the now-submerged door, so each man dove under and swam up to the other side.

In the semi-darkness, eerily lighted by the glow of phosphorescence stirred up by the onrushing water, they could make out a long ladder, whose steps led to what had once been the bottom of the ship and that was now the top.

They climbed onto the ladder and waited.

With ocean water continuing to pour in, the five men decided to see what was at the top of the ladder. They found a sealed, watertight door.

After breaking a heavy padlock, they entered a dark, seemingly spacious area.

West and another sailor, Bert Crenshaw, walked and crawled until they reached the bulkhead on the opposite side of the compartment.

The three others in the group were about 15 feet away, but they had no way of knowing for sure: They were enveloped in complete darkness, and there they remained.

Every so often, they would holler and count off.

And as long as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 was heard, West recalled, “We knew that everything was OK and it was dry.”

West remembered that it was easy to doze off, probably because of low oxygen. But they had no way of telling whether they were asleep for 10 minutes or two hours. And, thirsty after having swallowed oily sea water, West thought of the glasses of water he had turned down at restaurants.

When he was awake, West would pound on the bulkhead with his wrench.

After hours of repeated pounding, he finally heard an answer.

Rescue workers, who had begun cutting through the ship’s double bottom the morning of the attack, were systematically working their way through the bowels of the capsized vessel searching for survivors.

As water began lapping at the entombed sailors’ feet, the rescuers started cutting a hole just above where West and another sailor sat.

The five weakened, oil-soaked sailors were lifted out and guided through an escape route. At 2 p.m., the day after the attack, they finally saw daylight.

But the joy of being rescued quickly dimmed once they saw the devastation of battleship row, West recalled.

The Oklahoma was one of 21 American ships destroyed or damaged in the attack, which killed 2,388 people and wounded about 2,000.

West and the four other sailors were seated in a motor launch, given an apple and coffee with brandy, and taken to a hospital ship.

Although 32 men trapped inside the Oklahoma were rescued Dec. 8 and 9, tapping from those unable to be saved continued to be heard through the 10th.

In all, 20 of the Oklahoma’s officers and 395 enlisted men were reported either killed or missing.

West and the other four sailors he was trapped with all survived the war.

And West, who had been there for the beginning of America’s involvement, also was there for its end--as a crew member on the Massachusetts.

West had spent most of the war on shore duty--he helped establish a Navy training station in Maryland. But he was assigned to the Massachusetts in March 1945.

The battleship was among the first to bombard the Japanese home shores--revenge of sorts for what West and his fellow shipmates had experienced more than three years earlier.

“[Adm.] Halsey kept saying, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor,’” West told Life, “but I was trying to forget it.”

After the war, West moved to Philadelphia, where he had met his first wife, Betty, a few years earlier.

He worked as a salesman, first selling encyclopedias and then pots and pans door to door.

In 1952, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he continued to work as a salesman before starting his home interior business in West Covina.

In addition to Diane, West is survived by his second wife, Mary; six other daughters, Elizabeth Peoples of Agoura Hills, Cathy Barnes of Santa Ana, Patricia Olivieri of Laguna Hills, Joanne Benschop of San Juan Capistrano, Marianne Middlekauff of San Clemente and Barbara Higginbotham of Mission Viejo; a stepdaughter, Cheryl Holguin of Irvine; 13 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.