An Honorable Enterprise at the Yakima Herald-Republic 12/07/2001 1,154 words An Honorable Enterprise -- Joe Gallaher's ship missed Pearl Harbor carnage By DORI HARRELL YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC Joe Gallaher and his USS Enterprise shipmates formed a single-minded mission on Dec. 7, 1941: Destroy the Japanese fleet to avenge Pearl Harbor. Days earlier, the Navy aircraft carrier had left Pearl Harbor to deliver aircraft and crews to Wake Island. If the ship had returned on schedule, it would have been bombed, too. But rough seas delayed it. When the Enterprise finally pulled into Pearl Harbor on the evening of Dec. 8, Gallaher and the others saw capsized and smoking cruisers and destroyers. "There could have been one more if we were there," said the 77-year-old Gallaher of Yakima. "I grew up that night, because we'd have tied up right near all the others. We saw the damage to all the ships. Right then, we realized there was a war going on." Gallaher now lives off Ahtanum Road in a large mobile home with his beloved four-legged companion, an energetic 2-year-old boxer named Tiz. As he recalled the war recently, Tiz rested her head comfortably in Gallaher's lap. He frequently scratched her ears or patted her side. Gallaher held a 1985 Life magazine chronicling the Enterprise's many successes. Sitting nearby was his Enterprise cap. Hanging on a dining room chair was a brown leather bomber jacket emblazoned with an Enterprise nameplate. It's a new jacket, he explained, because the original finally wore out. In the driveway was his red Pontiac Fiero, its license plate: BIGECV6 for the Enterprise's nickname, the Big E, followed by her hull number. The four years he served aboard the Enterprise - the most decorated ship in World War II - are more vivid since the Sept. 11 suicidal terrorist attacks. That destruction triggered memories of Japanese kamikaze pilots aiming for his ship. The 32,000-ton Yorktown-class carrier "with soul" fought in 20 of the 22 battles in the Pacific. Until a kamikaze attack in May 1945 forced it out of the war, the ship was home to Gallaher and 3,200 other crew members. With two brothers already in the army, Gallaher enlisted in the Navy at age 17 in early 1941. "Everybody wanted to enlist then," he said. "There was a flag in each hand, you know." Requesting sea duty after basic training, he boarded the Enterprise in April and a year later was headed to the Battle of Midway, the turning point in America's eventual defeat of the Japanese. Gallaher's main duty was repairing shoes. He operated his own cobbler shop and slept in a private area. He didn't fire guns or divebomb the enemy, but he faced combat the same as any sailor. His battle station was as a firefighter, damage control repairman and stretcher bearer. At Midway, what was left of the American Pacific fleet caught the Japanese armada. Planes launched from the Enterprise turned two Japanese carriers into infernos and destroyed a third. Because the Big E suffered no hits at Midway, Gallaher's firefighting skills weren't put to the test. But the Enterprise wouldn't always be so lucky. Two months later, Japanese bombs and torpedoes blasted the ship in a battle off Guadalcanal. It was the first of many such encounters. "We were still bombing the Japanese fleet, but they were bombing us, too," Gallaher said. Each battle left Gallaher with vivid memories. He can still picture the Rising Sun insignia of Japanese torpedo planes that buzzed by the ship. He saw a shipboard photographer killed while trying to capture a falling bomb on film. He stood unscathed next to a shipmate killed by shrapnel. He cheered with his shipmates when Japanese planes shot down by Enterprise guns crashed into the ocean. He mourned when American aircraft suffered the same fate at the hands of the enemy. Fear sometimes gripped him. "But you just do the job you're trained to do. I knew at 17, I could see war, but I had no idea what it was." It wasn't all terror, he said. Ship life was often "good, great," with three square meals a day and showers too, when not in combat. "On the ship, we celebrated holidays and birthdays, we celebrated every chance we got," Gallaher said. They observed special occasions with "jungle juice." "We made our own drinks of pineapple, apples, oranges, cherries - anything that would ferment. It was really terrible stuff." Still, he never knew how long battles would last or when he would see land again. The ship sometimes roamed the seas for 50 straight days. During one skirmish, the Japanese planned a torpedo attack at night. They flew over the Enterprise and dropped flares by parachute to silhouette their target. Gallaher recalled the blazing white lights illuminating the sky. "They made it like a full moon, it was that bright," he said. The effort was foiled when the Enterprise's Adm. William "Bull" Halsey turned the ship toward the flares, ruining the silhouette. Gunners raked fleeing Japanese planes, Gallaher said. "I don't know how many planes we shot down, but we got a bunch that night," Gallaher said. But the most memorable event came before a battle in the Philippine Sea in February 1945, when he stepped onto the flight deck. "There were ships as far as you could see in any direction - ours. Altogether a memorable site," he said. Also unforgettable was the last kamikaze raid on the ship on May 14, 1945, just off Okinawa's shores. Gallaher referred to it as "the last hit." He huddled with others in the ship's stern, standing by for damage control, while Japanese bombers and kamikazes attacked. An explosion, a suicide hit, jolted them into each other. "You don't hear the explosions, you feel them," Gallaher said. Everyone said it was a near miss. But that near miss sent an Enterprise elevator - which lifted planes from the hangar to the flight deck - 400 feet into the air before falling into the salt water. "I looked down at the sea and saw the elevator floating by, and I knew it was the end." During the war, more than 1,000 of the Enterprise's sailors were killed or wounded. Gallaher escaped without a physical battle scar. He celebrates every one of the Big E's victories as his own, and there were many: 911 planes shot down, 71 ships sunk and another 192 badly damaged. The ship limped into the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton in late May 1945, and Gallaher transferred off two weeks before the war ended that August. He served one more year before mustering out for a career in construction. In 1950, he married Navy veteran Jeane Hoffer, who served as a telephone operator during the war. They had three children. After 43 years of marriage, Jeane died of multiple sclerosis. Gallaher has no grandchildren, but his boxer, Tiz, keeps him company. "I look back with a sense of pride," he said. "I wouldn't give up anything for that experience, but I wouldn't want to do it again."

An Honorable Enterprise at the Yakima Herald-Republic 12/07/2001 721 words An Honorable Enterprise -- Randy Waits Rescued Hundreds By DORI HARRELL YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC World War II veteran Randy Waits survived the Pearl Harbor attack and then spent the rest of the war aboard the USS Enterprise rescuing hundreds of other sailors. Waits didn't serve on the Enterprise, known as the Big E, until Dec. 11. The Cheyenne, Wyo., native joined the Navy in March 1941 at 17 years old.   He was immediately stationed in Pearl Harbor as an aviation metalsmith, repairing airplanes. He watched the Japanese drop their bombs. "All the American planes were lined up on the runway that day, in a show of force that backfired; that's my opinion," Waits said of that infamous day 60 years ago. "I don't know why they had them all lined up out there." Waits and his wife of 58 years, Phyllis, live in Yakima in a mobile home court on Washington Avenue. They have filled four photo albums with Enterprise memorabilia. As Waits leafed through the pages, he pointed out his buddies. More often than not, he said, "That one didn't make it." "The ship," he said, "was like a little city. I had a best buddy, but I only saw him once every two weeks or so." Once assigned to the Big E, Waits served as a shipfitter and headed a crew of six, repairing the 32,000-ton aircraft carrier after the 20 battles it fought in the Pacific. During combat, he led rescue teams. In addition to his many medals, he was honored with several commendations for saving the lives of crew. One particular rescue stands out. Waits couldn't remember the battle or how many men's lives were spared, but he clearly recalled the dark, the heat and the horror. The ship's steering engine room, which housed the machines that guided the Enterprise, caught fire after the Big E's ammunition storage room took a hit. While wading through wreckage and a pitch-black path to the steering engine room, he stepped on a man as he squeezed through a hatch. "He was crying for his mother," Waits said of the sailor. "And water was pouring into the ship. But we got to it, we got the hatch loose, and allthe men were able to crawl through." According to the commendation he received for that rescue, the trapped men were "suffering from intense heat and smoke." Waits witnessed kamikazes divebombing the carrier. He also saw the enemy light up the dark in the first-ever night attack in the Pacific. And often, he would drink homemade "jungle juice" with the crew to celebrate holidays and special events. Once, when one of the Enterprise's aircraft landed, a torpedo broke loose. "Two men straddled the weapon and pushed it over the side," he said. He also recalled savoring a letter from Phyllis while drinking coffee with his best friend, Bob Crawford, who was also relishing a letter from his wife, Barbara. "He was laughing, and I was laughing," Waits said. "He asked what was so funny." Unknown to the sailors, their wives worked together at the Bremerton naval shipyard and had written to their husbands asking if they knew each other on the ship. Both wives grew up in the Yakima Valley - Phyllis in Naches and Barbara in Yakima. "We didn't know the wives knew each other; they didn't know we knew each other," Waits said, adding that he and Crawford were comforted by their spouses' friendship. Other memories, though, sadden him even to this day. After departing the ship in 1944 in Bremerton, he proudly displayed his medals when in uniform. To his surprise, he saw young recruits in uniforms pinned with medals - imitation ones they had purchased in stores. "They were service people not out of basic training wearing medals they didn't win," he said. "I didn't wear mine again." After mustering out of the Navy in 1947, he and Phyllis moved to Naches. They have three children, 10 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. Waits trained as a plumber and worked for Yakima County from 1967 until he retired in 1986. "I have no regrets on serving my country," Waits said. "If called, I'd go today."   Top of page home| about dori |writing samples |current projects |dori's photography |writing tips| contact dori

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home| about dori |writing samples |current projects |dori's photography |writing tips| contact dori