News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Veteran remembers Pearl Harbor

"I was going to be a pro baseball player," World War II veteran Harold Mulligan recalls, admiring a framed photo of a young man in a white uniform. "Things sure turned out different."

A Pearl Harbor survivor, and involved in more than six major battles and historic events in the Pacific Theater, Mulligan recalls his time in a Navy uniform with mixed emotions.

"Sometimes I just wish I could forget about it all," he said.

When twilight falls on the high desert, the old ghosts still come out to haunt. Now at age 87, vital and rugged, with matinee-idol good looks and the clear blue eyes of a much younger man, Mulligan spends his days out in Crooked River Ranch with his wife, Connie, surrounded by serene oil paintings and a wall of framed memories and mementos from the past.

"We moved out here from Sisters a few years ago," he said. "The best part about it is not raking up any pine needles."

Those same blue eyes watched Japanese bombers torpedo battleships early one December morning, gazed upon Hiroshima at ground zero, witnessed Easy Company raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, were splashed by the 35-foot waves of Typhoon Louise, and blinded by the glare of nuclear fire in the Marshall Islands.

Mulligan was born in Oklahoma and was part of the great dustbowl migration during the depression that ravaged the fortunes of so many Americans. They headed West, seeking their pride in a meager day's wage in the fields and valleys of Central California.

"You know the 'Grapes of Wrath.' That was us," Mulligan said. "My father was a farmer and he took the family wherever there was work. We ended up in Tulare, California."

He entered the Navy back in June, 1941, and was assigned to the battleship USS Maryland. He was transferred off the Maryland on October 1, 1941, just two months before the Japanese attack, and took up duty on the USS Rigo, an auxiliary repair vessel at Pearl Harbor.

On December 7, Mulligan was aboard the Rigo when the first enemy planes appeared.

"Those planes came in right over our heads, strafing all the way, and dropped torpedoes for the battleships," he said. "If I'd had a rifle I could have shot at them. One of the pilots even waved to us. The Maryland took two hits, one in the bow, one in the fantail. We were just right across the bay in Berth 13, a couple hundred yards away. Everything was on fire, the smoke was so bad, and all those kids screaming in the water, the oil on fire around them."

After Pearl Harbor, Mulligan was assigned to a new ship, the USS Ardent, a 220-foot Auk class minesweeper in the Pacific.

The highlight of the Ardent's early service period occurred on 13 November, 1944. Ardent and the frigate USS Rockford were escorting a six-ship convoy midway between Honolulu and the United States.

At 12:32 p.m., Ardent's sonar picked up an enemy submarine contact. Ardent attacked first, firing a 24-charge "hedgehog" pattern, and again at 12:46 p.m. with a second hedgehog pattern. Rockford left her escort station to assist, and fired her first barrage of rockets at 13:08.

Two explosions followed, before an underwater detonation rocked the ship. Ardent carried out two more attacks and the frigate dropped 13 depth charges to administer the death blow. The resulting explosions caused a loss of all contact with the enemy submarine.

Wreckage recovered on the scene, deck planks, ground cork covered with diesel oil, a wood slat from a vegetable crate with Japanese advertisements on it, and a piece of deck planking containing Japanese builders' inscriptions indicated a definite kill.

Postwar research revealed the sunken submarine to be the notorious Japanese submarine I-12, which had sailed from the Inland Sea on 4 October to disrupt American shipping between the west coast and the Hawaiian Islands.

In sinking I-12, Ardent and USS Rockford avenged the atrocity I-12 had perpetrated on 30 October when, after sinking the American Liberty ship SS John A. Johnson the submarine surfaced, rammed and sunk the lifeboats and rafts, and then machine-gunned the remaining 70 survivors.

Ardent then was assigned to the massive invasion force at Iwo Jima in February 1945, conducting minesweeping operations eight days before the landing.

"Those big jaws cut the cables and the mines pop to the surface. We had guys out on the fantail with rifles and they'd shoot 'em. Some in close to the bays were set shallow, only about 10 feet down. At Okinawa we we're cutting mines with our sister ship, the Skylark. She caught one a little too shallow and she went down in 11 minutes. We picked up 19 survivors. One mine screeched right along our side and didn't break a bubble. We were lucky."

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, the Ardent was dispatched to the scene as part of a major convoy to observe and report.

"We were anchored pretty close to shore, just a few days after the bomb was dropped. That whole city was flattened. There was nothing there. It was all still on fire and smoking. You think of all those people in that city, and now they're all gone."

After the war, Mulligan returned to California, played some semi-pro baseball for a while, then went to work as a trucker.

"Billy Martin wanted me to go play with a major league farm team in Reno. I was a shortstop and a pitcher. The pay was $386 a month. Not bad money for the time, but I was making more money with my dump truck."

In April of 1951, Mulligan was called back to active duty and assigned to one of six landing ships for Operation Greenhouse, a series of four high-yield atomic bomb tests in the Enewetak Atoll of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.

"I was an engineering officer on one of the landing ships. We had 10 men, two firemen and an electrician, the rest belonged to the deck force."

One of these shots, code named George, was the largest nuclear device detonated to date, with an estimated kiloton yield of 225kt, an explosion 20 times more powerful than the blast that flattened Hiroshima.

Mulligan's ship was providing ferry service from the islands and observing the secret proceedings. Twenty-six miles away, he and his crew watched the blast topside. Mulligan recalls shielding his eyes from the fireball's intense glare.

"For a split second, I could see the bones in my hand."

The resulting fallout and radiation contamination has left Mulligan with a number of serious health issues.

"They didn't know what was going to happen. They gave eye protection to the big shots but not to us," he said.

Mulligan was one of thousands exposed to radiation while participating in atomic bomb tests after World War II. Now, he and his wife Connie are working to get compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs for illnesses he's had that may be related to the exposure.

After a long career as a long-haul trucker for North American Van Lines, Mulligan finally settled down in Oregon, where his community involvement and familiar grin made him a small celebrity and welcome guest everywhere.

His days now are not so eventful, yet still punctuated by echoes from the past that formed and forged his character.

His many friends, and involvement with the Sisters area veterans groups, keep him sharp. Mulligan's stories, recalled with astonishing clarity and detail, reflect duty well done - and its cost.

"Mostly at night when the sun goes down is when it bothers you most," he says. "The older you get, the worse it gets. There's a lot of nights lying awake."

 

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