80 years from Pearl Harbor

 

Pearl Harbor Revisited  by Bess Huefner

80 years ago my father, Edward Lee Seyfried had joined the Navy. His ship had been commissioned on August 21, 1941 and sent to Hawaii to service sea planes. He was in the hold of the Tangier checking the clocks early on the Sunday morning of December 7, 1941. USS Tangier was still astern of Utah when the first wave of Japanese aircraft flew into Pearl Harbor. The Utah, which had been converted from a battleship into a target ship, eventually capsized after taking extensive damage from Japanese torpedoes, but the Tangier came through unharmed. When the alarm went off his mate went up the ladder and locked the hold. Ed was in the hold for at least an hour before he was released. When he got on deck there were lots of men in the water and his ship mates were working hard to haul the sailors on board. The water was on fire and a lot of the men died because of their burns. Like many of the survivors, Dad did not talk about his experiences. He did say he learned to pray in that hour he was locked in the hold.