Let's get the hell out of here!' Since Tommy and Tony went out the back top hatch, I went out the bottom hatch down to the pilothouse. I then went to the port side of the ship, since enemy shells were mostly coming from the starboard side, and stepped very carefully to avoid dead bodies and a gaping hole in the deck. An enemy shell hit the Director and it zoomed to horizontal rotation, which hurried my leapfrogging over the port railing by quite a bit. I fell and landed spread-eagle. My body, about centered length-wise, hit ropes that were in my path. The ropes caused my body to spin 360 degrees and plop flat, face down, on the water surface. I had failed to tie the three lanyards on the front of my life jacket, so the fallwith the jacket wide openstressed my arms to the point where I thought they had both been broken. I sank about fifteen feet before returning to the surface. I was happy the ropes were about mid-way along the path of my fall. They broke my fall and saved me from major injuries. Surely the Lord had watched over me. It was about thirty-five feet from the bridge railing to the water surface. The ropes I hit were attached from the side of the ship to the forward davit that was left swinging out when the motor whaleboat was launched earlier. The boat was likely battle damaged. I swam aft as fast as I could against the drag of my life jacket, along the port side of the ship, helping guys in the water get back onto the ship. They were possibly from Gun Mount 54, as they had been about the last to abandon ship. We were off-loading a life raft, cargo floater net, water keg, and 5-inch powder canister filled with sea rations from the deck below Gun Mount 54. We were working as fast as we could so we could get as far away from the sinking GQ Johnny as we could and not end up being dragged under water by the undertow and blasted into eternity by depth charges that had not been made safe-armed. As we swam away from the sinking shipdragging the severely injured as we wentwe saw a Japanese destroyer about 200 yards to starboard that was pumping shells into GQ Johnny. Everyone who had life jackets got one arm out of the jacket so as to prepare to duck under the water if the Japanese started shooting at us with rifles. We surely were happy that they only jeered at us. When we were about 500 yards away, GQ Johnny finally went under (at about 1010). It went bow first and soon some depth charges went off, churning up water. Then the ordeal of survival really began. I think the crew disbursed from the sinking ship in about three equal groups with life rafts and floater nets and little survival provisions. We felt sure that we would be picked up by our ships soon but all of them raced away south. Our 7th Fleet Command (the so-called MacArthur's Navy) managed in bungle the job of picking up survivors sooner than fifty hours in the water, causing the death of many brave and wounded sailors. Surprisingly, the enemy lost no time in abruptly racing north. Not happy with my Kapok life jacket that would become water logged in about twenty-four hours, I acquired a rubber life belt from an officer who had died from severe battle injuries. I found that it had a slow leak but I kept it around my waist, thinking I could fill it with air because it had an auxiliary rubber tube for that purpose. I found the tube almost useless because I couldn't effectively expand my chest against the external water pressure, so the belt slowly deflated and was useless by the time we were picked up, fifty, two hours later. USS Johnston As time went on, a lot of memories passed through my mind and one of themover and over again, in factwas the first stanza of the poem, 'Death the Leveler,' by James Shirley. The poem was written sometime during the seventeenth century: The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things? There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Scepter and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. I also thought that if the Lord calls me I must go; that's fate. I found this poem in the main library in San Francisco when I was assigned to the USS Pennsylvania (The 'Pennsy'). I'd often visited the library or the USO on liberty when my money ran out. Something else passing through my mind was a Latin phrase my high school Latin teacher, Miss Lois Elaine Fischer, wrote in my 1941 graduation book: 'Omnia vincit qui se vincit.' Freely translated, this says, 'He conquers all who conquers himself.' She scolded me once for lack of good study effort. Well, this phrase helped me survive the very exhausting fifty-two hours in the shark and barracuda infested Philippine Sea by 146 repeating it over and over. It continues to bolster my spirit and carry me successfully through the rough times in life. The first night was mostly overcast so the phosphorescent bodies in the water were very visible. I was to the right of tall Lieutenant Ellsworth Welch where we were holding onto the perimeter of a floater net. He was explaining that his dad, a teacher in Long Beach, California, was studying the nature of phosphorescence when something pulled him down below the surface of the water! We all started yelling and slapping the water to drive off the attacker, which was probably a shark. I think the officers, with their tan colored uniforms, presented more visible targets for the sharks and barracudas that infested the Philippine Sea than the rest of us. After this, I tried very hard to be near the center of the crowd holding onto the floater net. I also felt a little more secure since I'm short, and I was wearing my black socks and dark blue dungarees. (I removed my shoes shortly after I abandoned ship because they were dragging me down in the water.) Later in the evening of the first night, a plane was heard overhead. To attract our potential rescuers, we expended the colored flareswe had threebut to no avail. I was near Lieutenant Hagen, who seemed to be distraught and mumbling. Someone near the floater net holding the flares was yelling for Hagen's directions to fire the flares and the color choice. I did my best to get Hagen's response and yelled out what I thought he'd want over the instructional shouts from others. A ship was also roaming the area. We thought this was possibly the enemy, so we quieted down. This incident and the sound of the plane overhead set off a bunch of ship or plane mirages throughout the night. A chilling shiver passed through my body when something grabbed one of the crew members in the back. He let out a loud cry of death. It seems he was on the perimeter of the floater net, which increased his vulnerability to predators. What haunted me more was that it sounded like the voice of a close friend. We all started yelling and slapping the water again to drive the off the sharks. I kept up my prayers, Latin phrase and poem vigilance so I wouldn't fall asleep, or start drinking the sea water and go into the hallucinations that seemed to occur all too frequently among our shipmates. The second day was more miserable as the sun beat down on our sunburned and swollen cracked lips. I was now numb from the cold. The only warmth I felt had occurred early in the afternoon on the first day. Excrement felt warm, especially the solid waste that drifted down my pants legs. The second night was worse with guys hallucinating more often. Around midnight, with my life belt no longer supporting me, I looped my arm around what I believe was the only raft in our group. If I didn't have this support, I was going to be a goner, because I was a poor swimmer, and still am. At this point, two of the weirdest things happened. One guy got into the life raft and cut the ropes on three sides of the lattice in the center of the raft, swinging the lattice down and indicated he was going down to CIC or the Radio Shack! Hallucinations again, no doubt, and I don't remember seeing him again. Then to my right, also with his arm looping the side of the life raft, Tommy Thompson told me over and over about the officer from England who had had stolen his girl in Seattle. We laughed heartily with him, calling the officer a 'Lef-tenant bastard.' After he felt the rubber tube, used to inflate my life belt, he suddenly said, in a frenzied voice, 'Lemme-see, lemme-see.' He probably thought the tube led to a fresh-water source. Well, it didn't, and I had to forcibly push him away from clambering over me in his attempt to grab it. Tommy never survived. He may have started gulping seawater in his wild frenzied state, and begun hallucinating. Soon, he disappeared beneath the water, not to surface again. Early on the morning of the third day, while I was still hanging onto the perimeter of a life raft, we all seemed to have grown quiet, with the exception of one guy who continued to repeat a boatload of nonsense for what seemed to be hours. He drove us crazy. I was happy he was on the opposite side of the raft. Finally, he broke away from his hold onto the raft and slowly drifted away, still blabbering on. Then about noon we saw an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) pop up over the horizon in a southeastern direction. We all came to life and let out a feeble yell. A guy with a reflector (with the sun hitting it perfectly) tried to get the LCI's attention, but it fell back over the horizon. We all let out a moan in unison, but in few minutes the LCI came racing toward us! The crew on the LCI threw a cargo net over the starboard side of the ship and had to give most of us a hand in clambering up the net. When I stepped on the hot deck in my black socks I had to be helped from falling. I was in a lot of pain, not only from the hot steel deck but also from an injury sustained to the shin of my right leg that I got in the typhoon we were in two days before the battle. My butterfly stitches had come off as a result of the seawater and the wound was open, swollen, and festering. I was so happy to get out of the sun and into the shade of the ship's superstructure, I didn't care anymore. The next morning, after being given food and a pair of too-large shoes, I went topside and found the ocean around the ship littered with structural debris and some bloated dead bodies. Many U.S. ships were blasting away at incoming kamikazes. The aft end of one ship, 147