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www.gastongazette.com | The GazettePage edited by Matt RichardsNATIONIRemembering the USS HoustonFrom wire reportsThe USS Houston was listing to one side and ablaze when radioman David Flynn heard a chilling order on the public address system: “Hear this: All hands abandon ship/’ “At that announcement you sort- of froze for a second, Flynn said ,f\Ve knew it was the end,” said electrician’s mate Howard Brooks.Thursday is the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Houston by a Japanese fleet off the coast of Java during World War II.Brooks, of New Jersey, and Flynn, of Florida, were in their early 20s when they leapt for their lives from the burning warship into a bloody sea roiled by exploding shells and machine gun bullets. The men now are 92 years old, but they carry visceral memories of that day.“To me, it's a very quick 70 years, Brooks said Of 1,068 crewmen, Brooks and Flynn were among just 291 sailors and Marines who survived both the loss of the ship and the years of brutal caDtivitv that followed inSoutheast AsiaThe loss of the heavy cruiser hit the dty of Houston hard, igniting a patriotic frenzy that culminated in a mass recruiting drive for volunteers to replace the lost crew, and a $85 million dollar fundraising campaign to pay for a new cruiser, as well as an aircraft carrier, the USS San Jacinto.Fifteen of the original crew members are still living, but Brooks and Flynn are the only two expected to make it to the reunion of the USS Houston CA-30 Survivors Association this weekend in the ship’s namesake city. On Saturday, they will join descendants of their shipmates for a 2 p.m. memorial service at a monument dedicated to the heavy cruiser in Sam Houston Park downtown.A Japanese fleet sunk the USS Houston and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth shortly after midnight on March 1,1942, in the Battle of Sunda StraitThe Perth went down first about 12:15 am Outgunned and outnumbered, the USS Houston’s crew fought on alonefor a half hour untfl all ammunition was spent 'We had no planes in the air at all but the Japanese had planes and they were dropping what we called star shells,'' Brooks said. They would light up the whole area around like daylight and we could see the ships firing at us. We were so close we could see sailors on the decks of the Japanese destroyers.”Flynn exited at the communication deck. Bleeding from shrapnel wounds, he jumped into the water and swam for his life.He headed for shore, but a Japanese boat fished him out of the water.Brooks, who was uninjured, dung onto the side of a life raft for three days. In the middle ofthe raft several wounded shipmates lay dying, one by one.'That was really a scary part to see those injured guys and not to be able to do anything and to see die Japanese not care about helping any wounded,” he said.The raft eventually washed ashore, where Brookswas captured by the Japanese He and Flynn spent the next three , and a half years as prisoners of war. Brooks was among those forced to build the Burma Railway, made famous in the movie “Bridge on the River Kwai.Back in the U.S., word of the USS Houston’s fate “aroused a fever pitch of patriotism in Houston,” ac-' cording to a 1949 Houston Chronide artide commemorating the event One thousand recruits volunteered to replace the lost crew of the Houston in what the newspaper enthusiastically described as “the greatest single mass recruiting drive ever seen in theUnited States.” During a public swearing-in ceremony, Mayor Neal Pickett read a special message from President Franklin Roosevelt that w£s broadcast around the world: “Our enemies have given us the chance to prove that there will be another USS Houston, and yet another USS Houston if that becomes necessary, and still another USS Houston as long as American ideals are in jeopardy, Roosevelt said.USS Houston in 1940.Special to The Gazette
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The Gaston Gazette
Gastonia, North Carolina, US
Thu, Mar 01, 2012
Page 5
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USA 09 Dec 2018
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