All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor

By Donald Stratton and Ken Gire

The New York Times bestselling memoir of survival and heroism at Pearl Harbor

“An unforgettable story of unfathomable courage.” —Reader’s Digest

In this, the first memoir by a USS Arizona sailor, Donald Stratton delivers an inspiring and unforgettable eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack and his remarkable return to the fight. 

At 8:10 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all around him the world tore itself apart.

In this extraordinary, never-before-told eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight.

Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half the American fatalaties at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus earning the distinction of having been present for the opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second World War.

As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of six living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent years.

*Library Journal

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9780062645371

Donald Stratton

Born in 1922, Donald Stratton grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Upon graduating high school in 1940, he enlisted in the United States Navy, and reported for duty on the battleship USS Arizona. After more than a year of recuperation following the Pearl Harbor attacks, Stratton reenlisted in the Navy and was commissioned to the destroyer USS Stack. From 1944-45, he served in the Pacific at the naval campaigns for New Guinea, the Philippines, and Okinawa. He has been married to his wife, Velma, for sixty-six years. They live in Colorado Springs.

Book preview

Prologue

The Awakening

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

—Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Commander of Japan’s Naval Forces

On the afternoon of December 7, 1941, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, reached Washington, D.C. Rumors raced unchecked through the corridors of power. The Pacific Fleet, destroyed? The island of Oahu, overrun? Japanese subs, seen off the coast of San Francisco? Japanese troops, mounting an amphibious landing? Japanese spies, living among us?

Switchboards lit up; teletypes chattered. Presses were stopped, broadcasts interrupted.

The West Coast, with its large population of Japanese immigrants, panicked. Schools in California closed. So did businesses. Extra! editions of newspapers sold out as soon as their bundles hit the streets. And suddenly every Japanese-American living here was looked on with suspicion. Some were shunned. Others were harassed. And many, before the war’s end, would be displaced, forced to live in internment camps.

As facts were checked and rumors dispelled, shock gave way to the sobering reality that America would be going to war—joining a global conflict it had wanted no part of. From coast to coast, people huddled around their radios, waiting to hear from their president. His fireside chats had gotten them through the Depression. If ever they needed a word from him, it was now.

The president’s two speechwriters were out of town at the time, and so it would be his words, and only his, that the nation would hear. On the evening of December 7, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called his secretary Grace Tully into his office. Sit down, Grace. I’m going before Congress tomorrow, and I’d like to dictate my message. It will be short.

By midnight, he had finished. When he awoke the next morning, a typed draft was waiting for him. He went over the speech and dressed for the day.

At noon on December 8, Congress opened a special joint session with a prayer by the Senate chaplain, who called for national unity.

About that time, six limousines pulled up to the White House. Roosevelt walked to the presidential car, silent and somber, pushing his legs, clad in painful braces hidden under his suit. The door of the Cadillac opened, and he eased himself in. Outside his car stood six Secret Service agents, three to each running board, each holstering a .38-caliber revolver. Inside sat four more, with sawed-off shotguns. Security had been ratcheted up all around the capital, not just for the president. Tensions were high. Everyone was wary.

Inside the car the president was poring over his speech, weighing every word. His opening line announced that the previous day would live in history. It now seemed too pale a phrase. He scratched out history. He needed something ruddier, flushed with outrage.

Above it, he printed the perfect word—infamy.

At 12:20, the president’s motorcade pulled into the parking lot of the U.S. Capitol. When the somber procession stopped, Roosevelt emerged from his limousine, wearing a navy blue cape over his shoulders. His son James was a captain in the Marine Corps and was wearing his dress blue uniform as he took his place at his father’s side.

His arm steadied his father as they made their way to the House chamber. The room was packed with senators, representatives, justices of the Supreme Court, and members of the president’s cabinet, along with the highest-ranking military leaders. His wife of thirty-six years, Eleanor Roosevelt, watched from the upstairs gallery, which was filled to capacity with more than five hundred people eagerly waiting for the president to speak.

The entire nation was an extension of that audience, gathering around radios. In Red Cloud, Nebraska, my family collected before a wooden, battery-operated radio that sat on a windowsill in the living room for better reception. It was now 12:30 P.M., and the gears of commerce halted, not just in tiny Red Cloud but in every town and city where those radio waves reached.

When all were seated, the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, announced: The President of the United States. The cavernous chamber erupted in cheers and applause. Still steadied by the arm of his son, the president walked the aisle, giving no greetings, shaking no hands, offering no smiles. He stepped onto the ramp to the podium, one measured step after another. As the cheers and applause reached a crescendo, even Roosevelt’s most strident opponents were wiping tears from their eyes.

An American flag hung vertically behind the dais, framing the president. An expectant hush fell over the room. He placed on the podium a black, loose-leaf, schoolboy’s notebook that held fewer than three pages of words. He spoke without gestures. His voice was clear. His language, measured. His tone, resolute. And just behind his words burned the anger of a nation that had been so violently awakened.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives.

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date that will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

The joint session leapt to its feet as one, thundering its applause. A short debate followed, then the resolution was put to a vote.

It passed the Senate, 82–0.

The House, 388–1.

In the six and a half minutes it took for the president to deliver his address, the nation was shaken from its isolationism and roused to its feet to join the greatest armed conflict in human history, a fight in which the fate of the world would be determined. The speech not only traveled over the airwaves of our nation, it circled the globe, giving hope to every war-torn country engaged in the awful bloodletting that would come to be known as the Second World War. And yet, as the president’s words faded, the outcome of the coming battle was far from ordained: Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany had raced almost unchecked across Asia and Europe; the holdouts, Britain, Russia, and China, were on the brink. The United States faced one of the greatest tests of its life.

AS AMERICA RALLIED around the president’s words and prepared for the coming battles, the war already had come to my fellow shipmates and me. Without debate, without discussion, without formal declaration. It arrived at dawn, without warning. It swooped down ruthlessly and relentlessly, one squadron after another after another. Worst of all, it came gleefully, the Japanese pilots taunting us as they passed, smiling at us, waving to us, laughing at us.

I was aboard the USS Arizona on the morning of December 7, 1941. The courage I saw in our men was astonishing. Those gallant sailors fought back however they could. Pilots tried to locate airplanes that were still operable, but only a few managed to get in the air and into the fight. Gunners found themselves with only the ammunition in their ready boxes, with the rest of the munitions they so desperately needed locked up belowdecks. If the bullets ran out, they raced to another gun, often one that had a fallen sailor crumpled beneath it. The rest of the men fought back with whatever weapons were at hand, shooting at the streaking Japanese planes with lightweight machine guns, rifles, even pistols.

Acts of individual heroism could be witnessed everywhere you looked. Men being savagely sprayed with bullets from machine gunners in torpedo bombers as they brought boxes of ammo up ladders to the antiaircraft guns. Other men carrying their wounded buddies to safety, trying desperately to stanch their bleeding. Still others in small boats, navigating through the fiery sea, pulling oil-soaked sailors from the water. Many putting out fires on board their ships. All the while these men were dodging enemy bullets that were cutting everything around them to shreds, including their fellow sailors.

WE WERE NOT extraordinary men, those of us who fought on that infamous date in December seventy-five years ago. Truth be told, most of us had enlisted because there were precious few jobs to be found where we lived. The Great Depression had pulled the pockets of the economy inside out, leaving little more than a lint’s worth of hope for the young men entering the workforce. Most of us who enlisted did so because we needed a job.

Pearl Harbor changed that. A surge of patriotism swept the country, and everyone threw themselves into the war effort. Love for country welled up inside seemingly every American, coming out in the songs we sang, in the movies produced, in the newspaper articles that were written. We were ordinary men. What was extraordinary was the country we loved. We loved who she was, what she stood for. We loved her for what she meant to us, and for what she had given to us, even in those meager times. It didn’t matter where you hailed from, whether you came from the mountains or the prairies, a sprawling city or a small coastal town: you loved her. We all did—more than the states we left behind, our homes, the careers we gave up. As too many would prove, we loved her more than our very lives.

The battleships and destroyers at Pearl Harbor were named after states from where some of us had been raised. Ohio. Tennessee. Oklahoma. Maryland. California. West Virginia. Utah. Nevada. Those vessels moored in that harbor so far from home reminded us where we came from.

The battleship I served my country on was the USS Arizona.

The men on that ship were drawn from different parts of the country. Some came from family farms in the Midwest. Some were fresh from the steel mills of Chicago. Others joined from dirt-poor towns in the Deep South. A few arrived with book smarts from places foreign to the rest of us—Annapolis, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt. They came from different religious backgrounds. Some were Catholics, some Protestants, some Jews. Others weren’t sure what they were. A few didn’t care. After all, many were still teenagers with their whole lives stretching before them. There would be plenty of time for religion, later. They came from different ethnic backgrounds, too. Their accents betrayed them.

There was a Jastrzemski from Michigan.

An O’Bryan from Massachusetts.

A Schroeder from New Jersey.

A Giovenazzo from Illinois.

A Riggins from California.

A Nelson from Arkansas.

A Smith from just about everywhere—Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Illinois, California, Ohio, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi.

And a Stratton from Nebraska.

What happened on December 7, 1941, if it didn’t kill us, changed us forever. President Roosevelt was right to call it a date that will live in infamy. But for my fellow survivors and me, it also is alive in memory, like shrapnel left embedded in our brains because the surgeon thought it too dangerous to operate. Those images remain with us survivors seventy-five years later. Sometimes they intrude into our day, a moment spontaneously combusting, and suddenly we are back in the flames that engulfed our ship or in the oil-slick waters that surrounded it. Sometimes they come to us in the night, a haunt of images that troubles our sleep. Or perhaps the phone rings, and we flinch. Or a car backfires, and instinctively we duck.

Some of these memories lie within me, forever still and silent, like the men entombed in the Arizona. Others, like the oil that seeps from its wreckage, slip around inside me until they find a way out and make their way to the surface, where they pool and sometimes catch fire.

OVER THE YEARS, many of us made the pilgrimage back to that harbor, where we have experienced both the soothing of those wounds, and, at the same time, a reopening of them. Have some been healed? Yes. Year by merciful year. But all? No. And that is true for so many who have survived trauma, not just those who have survived the horror of war.

With each anniversary our ranks thin.

Three hundred thirty-five Arizona sailors survived that day.

Only five remain.

I am looking forward to reuniting with them on the seventy-​fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor in December 2016. Realistically, though, I realize I am about out of anniversaries. At ninety-four, I don’t take the years ahead for granted. Not one.

More than 65 percent of my body was burned in the explosion that sank the Arizona. My body is a patchwork of scars and skin grafts. Much of the feeling has come back. But not all. My joints are stiff, and I have to push myself up from my chair, then steady myself before I take the first tentative step.

It’s been said that when an old person dies, it is like a library burning down. Having survived a fire that took so much from me, I have an obligation to save what memories I have from the flames that will one day come and claim what is left of me.

I share what I remember when I can. But a day will come when I can no longer speak. What then? I have asked myself. What will become of the memories that I as a survivor have experienced? Or the lessons that we as a nation have learned?

That is why I wrote this book.

I wanted to save from the fire something of my memories of the Arizona so that younger generations, and all of the children to come after them, can understand why Pearl Harbor matters. Though my memory is pretty good, here and there I have needed to augment it with research, and I am indebted to those sources that helped clarify my recollections. Most of the memories are my own, but I didn’t want the story to be exclusively mine. It’s important to me that the experiences of my shipmates and of other sailors, soldiers, and Marines who fought that day be included. They deserve to be heard, even though they are gone.

Especially because they are gone.

PART ONE

1

A Child of the Depression

Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break.

—John Steinbeck,

The Grapes of Wrath

What I saw that December morning in 1941, what all of us survivors witnessed, was the stuff of nightmares. When the living go back to walk among the dead, even in memory, it comes at a price. Can I afford it? I wonder. Can I keep going back there—to that day, to those images?

I wear to this day the physical scars from that attack, never letting me forget that terrible date. But, like the rest of those who survived that day, I have other wounds, ones that can’t be covered up with slacks and long-sleeved shirts. Scars on a part of me no one can see.

I wasn’t always like that.

I was once just a boy from Nebraska.

I grew up the son of a corn husker who lost all he had in the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. He didn’t have much, so he didn’t have much to lose. But there were other, deeper losses he incurred, more devastating than the cost of anything material. His dreams, small as they were, were gone. Much of who he was and thought he might become, crumbled. That agonizingly long decade was like a biblical plague of locusts that swarmed down on the small cornfield that was his life, stripping those things from him. From all of us.

The 1,512 sailors on the Arizona came out of those years, along with all the other men who fought in World War II. The Depression was the forge that formed us. When the fight came to us, we were ready for it. Like steel coming out of the blast furnaces, shaped into girders, then dipped into vats of oil to temper them. There was a strength you couldn’t see on the surface. Because of it, we were somehow able to bear the weight that a world at war placed on our shoulders.

I didn’t know I had it in me, some of the things the war brought out. I don’t think any of us did—you never know the strength of steel until it is tested.

Even so.

We were so young, those of us who enlisted—eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. Too young to go through what we endured that day, I can tell you that. If we were not quite men on December 6, by midmorning of the 7th we were.

This is my story. It is just one of thousands from those who shared that fateful day. And only one of hundreds of thousands from other sailors, soldiers, and airmen who joined the fight in the fateful days that followed. But it was mine to live, that story. And now, I figure, it is time to tell it.

I WAS BORN July 14, 1922, to Robert J. Stratton and Jesse Ray Rutledge. We lived on a farm that wasn’t ours, in a community that wasn’t large enough to qualify as a town. Barely a dot in the middle of the Great Plains, Inavale, Nebraska, was a crosshatch of dirt roads with a few tumbledown houses, none of which had electricity or running water.

While those in big cities were experiencing the frothy excesses of the Roaring Twenties, we in rural America were working

Reviews for All the Gallant Men

[daleallenraby · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read a few first-hand accounts of war experiences, including The Diary of Anne Frank, some of Kipling's stuff and From Green Bay to the Persian Gulf, written by SSG Walter Coyle, an NCO I served with. Some of these, are difficult reads. This one is not, in the sense that the language is relatively simple.This books is a good window into the mind of a young WWII veteran in general and a survivor of the Arizona in specific. I was, in a sense, very much like Donald Statton once upon a time when I was signing my name to a military contract.. I knew nothing of the world and though I was adventure bound, I had no idea of what that meant.Had I read this book in 1975, I might at least have gone out into the world a little more alert than I did.

[readingbeader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I need to buy this for my library. It is an easy read that will appeal to my boys who love war stories. Bonus that it is a memoir with a photo insert section. It made me cry in places, the horror and heartbreak of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was well written and detailed enough to get to me but not make me ill. The poem that Eleanor Roosevelt carried around in her wallet for the rest of her life is worth reprinting here.

Dear Lord,
Lest I continue
My complacent way,
Help me to remember that somewhere,
Somehow out there
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war,
I must answer
Am I worth dying for?

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All The Gallant Men: An America Sailor’s Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor, Donald Stratton, Ken Gire, authors; Mike Ortego, narrator.Donald Stratton was 94 years old (now 97) when he wrote his memoir to commemorate the December 7th, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. He believed, as the quote he references says, “when a person dies, it is like a library burns down.” He wanted to preserve his memories of that day for future generations. Pearl Harbor was an attack on this nation by a country that was actively engaged in duplicitous peace talks with America’s envoys. Japan’s act of war was a sneak attack of enormous magnitude for which they would ultimately pay dearly, but so did America. The book points out not only their heinous behavior, but it also shows the naïveté of the government, during this time, when Hitler was rising to power and advancing across Europe. We were asleep at the wheel, basking in an arrogant attitude of superiority, assuming we were safe even though all the signs of this act of war were on the horizon. Had there not been failures in communication, perhaps the dead and wounded of Pearl Harbor would not have numbered so many.Donald is a survivor of the attack that “will live in infamy”, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He carries his battle scarred body and memories with him everyday. Brought up in the Plains, poor, but faithful, he and his family were a tight knit unit with the belief that no matter what happened, G-d would provide for their welfare. Devout, they attended church in the best and the worst of times. The Sears Catalogue was their lifeline to the rest of the world, and it was through those pages that he learned what else was available to those who were better off, to those who lived elsewhere; he learned what was available to those who were not sharecroppers living basically from hand to mouth, using potato sacking for clothing and subsisting on kitchen gardens. With two younger brothers and a sister, he lived in four rooms with an outhouse. There were two bedrooms, a wood stove for cooking and a stove in the fireplace used for heat. Yet they remained content as a family unit.The times were different then and so it seems was the outlook on life. America was loved by patriots all over the United States, and they would eagerly step up to the plate when needed for its survival. Today, times seem a bit different. Today patriotism, especially associated with nationalism, is considered a “dirty word”; our flag is often disrespected, and those who profess love for the country are sometimes called “deplorables”. After reading his book, I can only hope that when the call comes to defend our shores, there will be men and women who are as brave as he was, who will stand up for what is just and right, and who will exhibit the valorous behavior that Stratton did.Donald’s story is one of deep devotion to his country. Even though he was gravely burned in the Pearl Harbor attack, as soon as he was able, he reenlisted and went back to fight with his “band of brothers”. His desire is to keep the memory of Pearl Harbor alive, as we must keep the memory of 9/11 alive, because forgetting might help to lay the groundwork for another sneak attack on our country. To me, his message affirms and asserts that we must be prepared, and we must be ready to defend ourselves and our great nation.The narrator of this book spoke in a measured town which conveyed the story without undue emotional involvement, therefore making the reenactment of that horrific day tolerable and comprehensible for the reader. The story of Stratton is both moving and inspiring. I hope the young adults of today, who have been coddled and brought up to expect life on a silver platter, will be up to the task if it ever arises.

[encephalical · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Captivating memoir from a survivor of the USS Arizona.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

5533. All the Gallant Men An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor, by Donald Stratton with Ken Gire (read 18 Feb 2018) The main author of this book was born 14 July 1922 in Inavale, Neb. and when he was 17 he enlisted in the Navy. He was assigned to the USS Arizona and this book tells of what he went through on Dec 7, 1941. The account of his narrow escape and the terrific injuries he received is well told and is wrenching and almost incredible. He had a long period of recovery from his injuries, his weight going down to 74 pounds. After he had recovered from his horrific injuries he was discharged, and for a time went back to Red Cloud, where his parents lived. But in 1944 he was able to reenlist in the Navy and saw action in the Pacific again. He married in 1950 and his career as a civilian was very strenuous, even though he had residual effects from his Pearl Harbor injuries. He was in his nineties when he wrote, with help, this book. Over the years he has often returned to Pear Harbor. I found this an a gripping story and one has to admire him for his heroic work in the war and for his strenuous life since. It is as good an account of what happened to him at Pearl Harbor as one could hope to read.

[book1dragon1952 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

finished [All The Gallant Men] by [[Donald Stratton with Ken Gire]]. This book moved me to tears more than once. I have been reading about World War II and this is the second book I've read in a month about Pearl Harbor. This book is the first memoir of a survivor of the attack of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It gives you a first hand account of what it was like on that day, during the attack. The actions of the servicemen and civilian personal that day were exceptional. The attack was something that we should never forget. I highly recommend this book and rate it 5 stars.