Alex O. Bernal

U.S. Navy
Pacific Theater

“…going to a town or city, there was no such thing. Some of the islands were just completely wiped out from the invasions and the bombarding…”

Alex Bernal was 17 when he dropped out of Tucson High and enlisted in the Navy. He served for almost two years throughout the Pacific and was part of the “second” tragedy at Pearl Harbor. For his bravery during this tragedy, he was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal.

I was born in January in 1925 in Phoenix, Arizona. I dropped out of my junior year at Tucson High School and at 17 enlisted in the United States Navy. I always had a yearning for the sea. I mean as a kid I liked swimming and my grandparents were all seafaring people, so I guess it was just natural for me to want to be in the Navy rather than in any other service. From the Naval Station up in Phoenix, I was sent by train to a San Diego Naval train station. Arriving there and seeing what the Navy was all about was so new to everyone. Everybody was in uniform and we were in civilian clothes, so we were just wondering how long it would be before we were in the ranks. When you joined the service you had to make up your mind whether you were going to adjust to military life and know where the chain of command is. You don’t buck it if those above you are good or bad or not to your liking, not to say that they are bad. If you buck it you are in trouble, because you are not comfortable. Sooner or later you are going to wind up digging ditches and so forth, so I adjusted real well. I respect the chain of command—the skipper was the skipper. If he says go, we went, and so forth.

Pastel of the ship, USS Rutilicus AK 11, Bernal was aboard while transporting cargo from island to island in the Marianna and Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.

From San Diego we went up to San Francisco and there we caught a ship going to Pearl Harbor. We were passengers because they were going to drop us off in Pearl Harbor. That was my first contact with the ocean, sea going, when we were on route to Pearl Harbor. They sent a unit of us that had gone to training school to join up there with amphibious operations. On the way to Pearl Harbor we were aboard the U.S.S. Orion, which was a submarine tender. They didn’t have any place for us in the compartments or areas to bed so they told us to sleep anywhere. So we would sleep on top of torpedoes! We just put our mattresses and hammocks across the torpedoes and we slept in the torpedo rooms. About five hundred of us were naturally all green for the sea. Luckily enough I didn’t get seasick, but about ninety percent of the bunch that was aboard ship was. It was just bad enough that it had to be on Thanksgiving Day. Nobody could eat the holiday meal.

When I was in Pearl Harbor and we had these explosions it was in the 21st of May 1944. It was a tragedy known as the “Second Pearl Harbor” because of the number of people that were killed and number of ships that were lost. The ships were being loaded for an invasion and they had ammunition, gasoline, and bombs and so forth, so when the explosion started, they just went up. Then there was a chain reaction of fire and explosions that caused the other ships to catch fire. We ended up with a hundred and sixty three men killed, an estimated four hundred injured and we lost six ships that were critical for the invasion of Saipan. At the time that it happened I was doing what we called taxi duty between the ship and shore. I was right there with some maintenance crews to one of the ships, and one of the ships exploded in the middle of the series of LSTs. I was caught in between two ships when the explosion came and that’s how I got hurt. I still continued to pick up survivors and for that I was awarded the Navy Commendation Ribbon/Medal (now known as the Navy And Marine Corps Achievement Medal) for going into the explosion and fire and picking up my wounded comrades.

Similar to the group of LST that exploded, caught fire and sunk in Pearl Harbor where Bernal earned his Navy Commendation Medal (now known as the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal) for aiding the wounded after the initial LST explosion.

On the 60th year anniversary of the accident, we got invited back to Pearl. There were nine of us survivors, which was all they were able to get a hold of to go down there. There might be more, but they managed to get a hold of only nine people. Going back there and seeing the rusty ships that were still in the harbor that burnt down and just sunk there—all are still there where you can see them—was very meaningful for all of us. The Navy gave us a big anniversary ceremony with color guards.

After the incident at Pearl Harbor, I was aboard ship, assigned to the AK-113 and the rest of the crew and I were going to be temporarily on the Captain’s boat. What they call the Captain’s special boat. I was in the deck force, so our job was keeping the ship spic and span along with working on all the mechanical parts that had to be replaced like your crane, your winches, your boats and of course painting the ship. That was just to occupy our time while waiting for our turn for guard duty to come around. It could be every four hours, it could be every eight hours. It could be off and on four hours or it could be all night or all day.

Then on the way back from the Marianas they were going to drop us off at Pearl Harbor. That’s when we began our tour on island hopping from the Marshall Islands to Saipan to Tinian, and the Philippines. At Tinian the mission of the ship I was on was to drop off flood equipment for a Navy organization known as the Acorns. This was an Air communication Navy project that set up runways and communications for airfields on the islands. Strangely enough at the time we didn’t even know that going to Tinian and taking this organization down there was where the flights for Nagasaki and Hiroshima took off. We were instrumental in taking all this equipment down there to get it ready for the flights to these places.

Honorable Discharge Certificate Bernal received after suffering from a broken ear drum as a result of the second tragedy at Pearl Harbor.

While we were in the Marshall Islands we had to stay there for about six weeks waiting until the island cooled down so we could go in because we were not the main combat force. We were cargo supports, attack cargo supports, but there we were pretty much still under fire. We ourselves didn’t do any combat support there.

When we got to an island that was pretty secured we would have maybe a little swimming party or a little beach party. Once in awhile there was some near beer for us, but that was the extent of the alcohol we had. Now, being out in the islands there is nothing as far as recreation. Like going to a town or city, there was no such thing. Some of the islands were just completely wiped out from the invasions and the bombarding. One of our major ports was Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, and that was one of the main ports where there was civilization.

As far as fun aboard ship goes, the main prank that happened was when you cross the equator. When you cross the equator, if you have never been across it and you are in the ship with people that have, they initiate you. We had a big initiation. Before you crossed the equator you were known as the pollywog, a small fish. When you crossed the equator you then became a shellback, which means that you have made it. It’s just a little break in the action where people have fun. They order you around to do crazy things, baste you in oil, or send you to watches that you aren’t supposed to have. Or maybe somebody wants you to do their laundry or clean their compartments or something like that. Since you were a pollywog you have to do it or else the initiation goes a little rough on you. For one thing, we would have a series of events that you have to go through. Like you go through a belt line, where they whack you with a belt. Then they dunk you in salt water or oil and splash diesel oil on you. Then you come off of watch and you meet one of the shellbacks and they say go take my watch, so you have to go take their watch. Then you come back and they say, Okay, now shine my shoes.

One thing that I remember was when we left Pearl Harbor and we were assigned to the AK-113. We were loaned to the ship and since we were a base that replaced the crews for the ships that needed them, they asked for a Captain’s gig. It’s a boat that was going to be just used by the Captain for their special services, since this ship wasn’t equipped with one. That’s how I got aboard on the ship; I was a member of the Captain’s gig boat. One of the scary moments that I can remember is running into a typhoon. We were in convoy in from Kwajalein to Saipan and we ran into a typhoon there. Boy, those typhoons are mean. They roll those ships and they rock those ships, they dunk them, whatever, you name it. Then, when we went to Kwajalein on our way to the Marianas, we were only a crew of three. The man in charge of my boat was rated coxswain, Third Class Petty Officer. He didn’t want the duty so he got assigned to the ship and they gave me the duty of being in charge of the boat. I was the Captain’s driver. That went on real good until one day when we were getting ready to depart to a big rendezvous of all the skippers in the harbor. The Captain wanted me to take him to the ship that was going to hold the meeting, so when we were going there, me being a hotshot driver, I rammed the ship! As it turned out, it wasn’t actually my fault. The mechanic on my ship failed to put a cotter pin on the shaft to the propeller, so when I threw the boat in reverse to make my landing, the screws flew out. But that was my last duty as the Captain’s private driver.

In March 2001, Bernal attended the 50th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack.

It was really embarrassing for me because I had all these people on my boat, and I had to ram the ship. When we were at New Caledonia eight months later, the Navy caught up with my files and that’s when they sent my commendation award through the mail. In a private ceremony, the skipper of my ship that had taken me out of his boat had to present me my commendation ribbon. Nobody ever asked me why it happened or anything, he just said take him off of the boat. Yet if they would have looked into it, it wasn’t even my fault; it was my mechanic’s fault. He didn’t put those cotter pins in to hold the screws.
I had family back in the States, here in Tucson, Arizona: my mother and my sister. I had two brothers and we were all in the service, one was in the Navy and one was in the Air Corps in England. The only way to keep in touch at the time was by mail. Since we were at sea we would get maybe a letter every four or five months. When the mail was sent, they more or less knew our schedule and they would send it ahead. By the time we got there, maybe the mail would be there, and if we missed it they would send it at another other point where we might be. When you are out at sea for days and days your friends and family are all you think about. “What am I doing here? I’m in nothing but water, and yet my folks are in Tucson, Arizona, nice and dry. Right now it’s Christmas there, right now it’s the Fourth of July there,” things like that.

I was in the service for two years and three months, counting my first year that I went through boot camp and training and all that. I didn’t really have enough time to get my third stripe. I was becoming eligible when I got out of the service. When we came back to the States, the second time through San Francisco, I requested that they send me to a medical hospital there to evaluate my ears, because I was having a rough problem with my broken ear drum. That’s when they transferred me off the ship and sent me from one hospital to another. I started out at Treasure Island, then Treasure Island sent me to Oakland Naval Hospital and then Oakland, after they ran their evaluation, said “Well, if you want to get out we will send you down to Yosemite National Park, which is a Navy convalescent hospital, and they can process you out of there.”

So, for about two months, I was down in Yosemite. The Navy had taken over the Ahwahnee Hotel there and they had made it into a convalescent hospital. It was beautiful country. While I was there I got my medical discharge from the Navy. I was only twenty years old at the time, so I came back home. I never got to be twenty-one while I was in the service. It was in August when the United States bombed Japan and the war ended. That’s where we were. I was in Yosemite, and here now you read stories about the wild thing that was going on all over the country about celebration. Since we were there on the reservation they locked us down. We were restricted to quarters, so we couldn’t even go to a little recreation resort there in Yosemite, because they didn’t want us out. We would probably tear the place apart. That’s where I spend my VJ day, in lock-down there in Yosemite. Then a few days later when I was getting my walking papers, I got discharged and was sent home.

I always wanted to come back and get my cap and gown and my diploma. I did come back and since we were under the GI Bill, it was an incentive to not use an excuse if we didn’t have the money. I came back and I got out of the Navy by the fourth of September and by the ninth I was in high school. I came straight home and enrolled because the semester was just starting. So then I stayed there and graduated in January of ‘47. I crammed a lot of summer classes so that I could get my credits and get out of there.

When you get out of the service, you put it behind you as a good thing that you did survive and then you were able to carry on through more or less a normal life. After I finished school, I got married and raised a family. Then I went to work for the Department of Defense in traffic management. I was in charge of shipping and receiving personnel and equipment to missions all around the world. I retired from there after thirty-eight years.