Pearl Harbor, 68 years later: Survivor recalls attack Local man stationed on USS Trever when bombs started to drop
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| Navy boilermaker 2nd class Roy Phillips, 88, of Como, holds a picture of the USS Trever, the ship he was stationed on during the attack on Pearl Harbor 68 years ago today. (Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@svnmail.com) |
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STERLING – Roy Phillips sat inside the steel belly of a U.S. Navy destroyer-turned-minesweeper. He had a stomach full of scrambled eggs, and no idea that dozens of other ships and barracks already were under attack.
The USS Trever, where Phillips ate breakfast, was moored at Pearl City, a military landing on the other side of a narrow channel from the primary target of the Japanese Imperial Army: the naval air base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
It was Dec. 7, 1941. A Sunday. Boilermaker 2nd Class Phillips’ favorite day. The Trever galley served all the eggs sailors could eat at breakfast and all the cold cut sandwiches they could handle for dinner.
“We never made it to dinner,” Phillips said. “I just went above deck to get some air. ... It was a real nice day ... when I saw the Japanese planes flying all over.
“It wasn’t much longer when they called us to battle stations.”
Phillips, now an 88-year-old resident of Como, was one of about 80,000 Americans, both military and civilian, who were attacked at the naval base in an act of aggression most historians say precipitated the United States’ entry into World War II.
A Sauk Valley resident for the past 45 years, Phillips is one of the estimated 13,000 remaining survivors saw the attack.
Phillips’ childhood was an unlikely one for a man who would one day enlist amid the largest conflict in global history.
He was born to farmhands in a Shaker village in central Kentucky, where the religious teachings emphasized hard work and forbade sexual intercourse.
The Shakers died out in 1923, his father lost the farm, his grandfather died, and Phillips went to live with his mother in Lexington, Ky.
It was there that Phillips went to high school and decided to join the Navy, 15 years after leaving his family’s farm.
“I sure did love it on that farm,” Phillips said. “Just couldn’t stay there forever. You know what the Shakers practiced – that can’t last.”
In the Navy, Phillips found work he was good at.
He made boilermaker by shimmying down into massive oil-burning fireboxes. He got promoted by being eager to learn.
On the morning of Dec. 7, the surprise Japanese attack was not enough to scare Phillips, or his shipmates.
“I never was afraid of nothing,” Phillips said. “I never did see nobody who was afraid.”
Today, he walks his three German shepherds 3 miles every day.
“I credit these dogs with keeping me young.”
