Jan. 7, 2002
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Jim Montgomery appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
On a Sunday morning in 1941, Seaman 1st/Class Donald Stratton was firing at Japanese warplanes attacking Pearl Harbor.
On a Friday evening 60 years later, almost to the day, he watched his granddaughter play basketball for Baylor in Honolulu, just a few miles from the memorial to his ship, the sunken Battleship Arizona.
About 1,200 American sailors lie entombed below the Arizona memorial. Stratton survived, one of perhaps 375 who did. He is still undergoing treatment for burns that covered more than half his body. He was in Hawaii for the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The nationally-ranked Lady Bears were there to play the University of Hawaii in the Tesoro Invitational Tournament.
Small world. Family ties, each a celebrity in vastly different ways.
Jessika Stratton was there because she's a good athlete. Donald Stratton was there because he fought, successfully, for his life.
"I'D BEEN ON THE anti-aircraft guns, on the foremast, for a good while, shooting at them (Japanese planes)," Donald Stratton remembered those early hours of Dec. 7. "I seen the Oklahoma capsize. I seen the West Virginia get hit, and the Tennessee. When the bomb hit us, there was just a tower of smoke and fire, hundreds of feet high.
"We didn't have much of a chance."
Hundreds of sailors were trapped and drowned below decks as the shattered ship went down. Others were flung into burning oil-covered water when the Japanese bomb penetrated and blew up the Arizona's powder magazine.
The ship's foremast, however, was intact, more or less, although leaning at a sharp angle, Stratton and a few others still hanging on as flames ate at their bodies.
Stratton's hands, arms, legs and torso were charred from the fires, as were most of those on the foremast AA battery.
At the time, Stratton had been in the Navy just 14 months. "I was a flatlander from Nebraska," he said. "I made Seaman First and they put me on the deck force. We chipped paint and holystoned. On the battle stations, I was assigned to the anti-aircraft director one deck above the bridge on the foremast. We were getting dive bombed and strafed and I saw torpedoes in the water.
"WE WERE FIRING at 'em and all at once the big bomb hit. It shook that 30,000-ton ship like a dog shakes a rat, but we were inside the director, and that protected us some.
"There was a repair ship, the Vestal, close to us.
"They threw us a line. We pulled it in with a bigger line tied to the other end. When we got it tied off, we started going hand-over-hand across that line. It was maybe 50 feet across and we were about 60 feet in the air."
"We had burned skin and flesh hanging off our arms like long black stockings. We just pulled it off, threw it off and went on."
Desperate men do desperate things.
For Seaman 1/C Stratton, years of treatment and therapy lay ahead. "We were burned all to hell," he said.
Granddaughter Jessika said she was "about 8, I think. I was in middle school" when she first learned of her grandfather's experiences in Pearl Harbor.
"He'll talk about it, but only if he's asked," she said. "He's real active. He's always out in the yard doing something. I'm really excited about getting to see him again, over there where it all happened."
Donald Stratton was part of the Discovery Channel's "Death of the Arizona" hour-long program that first aired Dec. 2. "I saw that," Jessika said. "That was something."
Jessika, a sophomore at Baylor, is averaging 8.1 points a game for the Lady Bears, who took a 7-0 record and the nation's No. 9 ranking into the Honolulu tournament. Donald Stratton, who now lives in California, had not seen his granddaughter play since she entered Baylor.
"We saw her play quite a bit, ever since she was a little girl," he said, "Followed her to Oregon and to some of those tournaments in Colorado Springs. Her sister (Nicole) plays basketball (Colorado Springs Coronado High School), and she's not too shabby either.
"Our schedule (60th Pearl Harbor anniversary) is busy-busy, but we're going to see Jessika's game."
Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Jim Montgomery appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.
