PEARL HARBOR
(U.S. spelling here and there)
Ronald Harry Lodge was born in Normanton in 1904, the third
son of Thomas Henry and Sarah Jane Lodge, both from Skelmanthorpe in Yorkshire.
Around 1925 he left home to seek his fortune with an
assisted passage to Canada on a scheme to help young men work on farms,
ploughing by hand with a big team of horses type of work, which he didn’t stick
long and he did various other things in passing, working in lumber camps, and
railroads. Crossing into the USA illegally he took any job that was
going, but as a bit of an artist he worked his way across America as a sign painter. Getting to Hollywood he got a job as clerk in
the studios there. He eventually worked his way to the big island in Hawaii
becoming a cowboy on what was then the largest cattle ranch in America, so
spent much of his time on horseback, there and later on at sugar plantations On his one visit to the UK in 1950 he gave me
lasso lessons.
He met Criss, his wife-to-be, who was a teacher at an estate
school, but his prospective father in-law sent him back to re-enter the
country legally before he allowed him to marry her. He returned to the US and had a tough time as a salesman
for a couple of years before acquiring citizenship.
He worked for the Oahu Sugar Co. Ltd. as an overseer of
sugar cane and pineapples and before retiring managed a 20.000 acre sugar
estate.
I believe that riding a motorbike on the estate roads in order to get around on his job, gave him a bad back at the time. Hardly surprising! (late 1930's pic)
An active outdoor sportsman he was a keen fisherman and
hunter and was also an accomplished photographer.
He witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th
December 1941
and was author of a large illustrated book – Waipahu at War, which was published by the
Oahu Sugar Co. Ltd. in 1945. Last time I
looked one was selling on EBay for $125.
I still have my copy.
Following the attack on Pear Harbour, he joined the 3rd
Battalion, 2nd Regiment Oahu Volunteer Infantry and became a Major,
Headquarters Company, while his wife Criss joined the Red Cross.
Being beside Pearl Harbour at the time of the attack he took
photographs but these ended up in the hands of the military and were never seen
again. He was given some negatives by
Brigadier General Kendall Fielder who was Commanding Officer of Military
Intelligence & Counterintelligence Hawaii & Pacific Ocean Areas, of
photographs I see widely used to illustrate the attack, so I assume these are
duplicates. Images from them are used in
the book he authored and one is below and is one of the iconic pictures one
associates with the attack.
I always wonder what happened to the two men
part way up the superstructure of the stricken battleship USS West Virginia as
they contemplate the fire and destruction below them. Sixty six died in the areas flooded below
decks, some only surviving for a while in air pockets. Three crew who were trapped in a store room
are know to have lived at least until about Christmas Eve from a marked
calendar there, their bodies discovered when repairs eventually commenced. However, the battleship was eventually rebuilt
to play an active part in the Pacific war.
His account of the attack on Peal Harbour from his perspective is as follows. I have retyped his signed account written a short time after but not dated.
A Report in the Pearl Harbor Attack December 7, 1941 as it affected my section of Oahu Sugar Co. Ltd.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came as a sudden shock to all of
us. How the military could have been so
unprepared is one of the puzzling aspects that has not yet been solved. Months
prior to the attack, the F.B.I., Army and Navy intelligence had made census
studies of the plantation workers living on the perimeter of Pearl Harbour which was part of Waipio peninsular
under my supervision. A few of these
workers were Japanese, the balance were Philipinos. It appeared obvious that the reason for the
study was to plan evacuation of these people in case of an attack. Yet the military, particularly the navy, was
caught totally unprepared.
My wife and I and our daughter Ronda were having breakfast a
few minutes before 8 o’clock when the sound of explosions and the roar of
airplanes broke the peace and quiet of that Sunday morning. At the time we were not greatly concerned
because there had been many realistic war games prior to this. However we soon realized this was something
different. We went outside for a better
look. A lone plane buzzed the area and
shot up the sugar mill. It had the
rising sun of Japan on the fuselage. My wife dashed in the house and turned on the
radio in time to hear the announcer repeat several times that we were under
attack. About this time there were
several explosions in the cane field in front of our house which later proved
to be exploding shells. A sudden blast
shook the house and a shell blew a hole in the paved road back of us and
showered our house with gravel. Our dog
Cracker was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
The phone rang and I was told to evacuate all the employees
living in the Pearl
Harbor
area. After locating a couple of truck
drivers we took the old bus used by the Oahu Sugar Co. athletic teams and a
labor truck and hurried to the Waipio Peninsular with me leading the parade in
my car. The plantation road follows the
shore line. Japanese planes were coming
in in waves crossing directly over us and blasting away at shipping and
installations on Ford Island and Pearl Harbor.
Several bursts of machine gun bullets sprayed the road just ahead of my
car. With the help of my water luna
E..M. Faye, we rounded up the men with some difficulty as many had taken cover
in the cane fields. The air was thick
with shrapnel but by some miracle nobody was hit although all three vehicles
had a few dents.
Once the men were evacuated I took shelter under one of the
many old keawe trees that seemed to lean out over the shoreline. By this time it appeared that every
battleship, cruiser and destroyer was either afire, exploding or already at the
bottom with their superstructures leaning at a crazy angle above water. Great columns of black smoke belched upwards
from both warships and shore installations and a row of planes parked on Ford Island blazed in a holocaust of flaming
gasoline as attacking planes caught them like sitting ducks. The noise of exploding bombs and gunfire was
deafening.
The battleship Nevada which was still afloat passed a few
hundred yards in front of me heading for the harbor mouth. When almost opposite, it was hit by a torpedo
carried under the fuselage of one of the attacking planes. There was a shattering blast and a hole appeared
in the bow of the ship big enough to drive a car through. Simultaneously several bombs appeared to hit
the deck. According to later reports,
there was not a single commissioned officer aboard. The ranking sailor on the Nevada was a chief petty officer and he
immediately beached the ship in comparatively shallow water. She settled on the bottom with the decks
awash. This was the first ship to be
salvaged in the weeks following the attack.
Shortly after this incident a Japanese plane was hit by gunfire
and came crashing through the gnarled old keawe not far from where I
crouched. The pilot was literally torn
to fragments. This was the only plane I
saw shot down in this area.
The men returned to work on December 11th. And we
gradually resumed normal operations.
There was no great damage to my section of the plantation, but for a long
time we were locating unexploded shells from the cane fields. Sometime after the attack I found an
unexploded bomb on the edge of a field bordering Pearl Harbor.
I called one of my irrigators and told him to guard it until I returned
with a naval officer from a nearby installation. As we rounded the corner of the cane field,
my irrigator was hefting the weight of the bomb in his two hands. When he saw
us he hurriedly dropped it. Fortunately
it was one of those times when the bomb did not explode.
In conclusion it should be stated that there was no act of
sabotage by the local Japanese on my section or anywhere else that I know or
anywhere else that I know of.
As a collector of shrapnel when a small boy, my efforts were
totally eclipsed by his!
Apart from my copy of his book I have one or two other
mementos of this time and later. My
Uncle, for that is what he was, sent me an inscribed bullet that was fired during the attack.
I also
have a small square of teak from the quarter deck of the battleship USS Missouri on
which the Japanese surrender was signed.
I guess there were millions of these made but not many in Huddersfield
area will have one.
His account was also put on the web some time
ago -
Ronald Harry Lodge, 1904 - 1995,
As my uncle once commented, there was probably no other Yorkshireman there, watching the events of Pearl Harbor unfold on the 7th December 1941
