When William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” he could have been describing my wartime service on board the USS Nevada (BB-36).
Even though it has been 80 years since I reported aboard the battleship at San Francisco in 1943, my memories of the major battles the Nevada fought in World War II remain as vivid as if they happened yesterday.
I had the privilege of serving on a U.S. warship that served in every major theater of the war. She was the only battleship that was able to get underway during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although severely damaged by a torpedo and five bomb hits that sparked a major fire belowdecks and killed 60 crewmen, the Nevada nevertheless was repaired, modernized, and returned to service in just ten months. She had just returned from her first wartime mission bombarding Japanese positions on Attu in the Aleutians when I reported aboard at San Francisco in late May 1943. I was one of 200 freshly minted sailors who had crossed the country by train from boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois.
