SMU Rose Bowl Team Member Recalls Pearl Harbor Attack

[MrMustang1965]

from the Gainesville (GA) Times

Bill Brotherton Jr. will not do anything special today to mark the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Yet neither will he forget.

Brotherton, 87, said he doesn't talk to groups about his eyewitness account of the Japanese attack because the memories come thick with emotions.

"I get choked up," he said. "Just thinking about those boys on the Arizona. Twelve-hundred of them, smothering to death."

The image of the battleship USS Arizona, crumpled and smoking, is iconic of the surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at the Hawaiian harbor.

At about 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, the first of two waves of Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes struck. Five of eight battleships were sunk. Other ships and planes were destroyed. Some 2,400 people were killed and more than 1,100 wounded.

The ambush drew a shocked and furious nation into World War II.

A native of Dallas, Texas, Brotherton was a Southern Methodist University graduate and 1936 Rose Bowl football team member who enlisted in the Navy to avoid the draft and heed friends' warnings about Army training in south Texas.

In San Diego, a smart remark to an officer quickly landed the 2nd class petty officer on the U.S.S. Sumner, a survey ship en route to Pearl Harbor.

About 10 days later, on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the Sumner was docked in the submarine base just off the main harbor. Brotherton had walked to the back, or "fantail," of the ship for the presentation of flags.

"We were back there saluting and all these planes were going by ... We thought they were our planes."

Then a crewmember yelled they weren't. As the realization settled in, Brotherton ran for the bridge and began relaying instructions on the intercom from the skipper.

Others began firing the Sumner's 3-inch guns and 50-caliber machine guns. They shot down a torpedo plane at 8:03 a.m. Another bomber, already winged, spewed smoke before zooming out of sight.

From Brotherton's view, the Sumner was the only ship in sight firing back. The reason: Officers had ignored earlier orders to store the ammunition below deck.

On the bridge, the hoard of planes coming in overhead, headed for the battleships in the main harbor, seemed too close.

"It's kind of like you could almost touch them," Brotherton said. "You could see the pilots' faces. Some of them would turn their heads and grin at you."

He remembers other faces: the faces of veteran crew scared stiff.

Brotherton also recalls glancing at fuel tanks lining a nearby yard and thinking if they were hit, "We're done."

A third wave of planes, planned but called off, might have targeted the field.

Brotherton skirted death another time. Weeks later, a submarine's torpedo went under the ship as it sailed with the first task force to leave Pearl Harbor after the attack. Destroyers shattered the submarine with depth charges.

Brotherton later ended up working in administration at fleet headquarters in Australia and the Admiralty Islands.

Now white-haired, he has a blue cap with a Pearl Harbor pin and the Sumner's toll: two planes, one sub. Because the ship actually dredged up a miniature sub later in the harbor, Brotherton says with a smile he needs to get his hat changed.

After the war, he built careers in insurance and real estate. He's a charter member of the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors. He and his wife, Wilma, raised three children, including a son who died as an adult.

The Brothertons moved to Oakwood in 1972, into a two-story brick home on what is now about 21 acres at McEver and Old Flowery Branch roads.

Mack Abbott is probably Hall County's best-known Pearl Harbor survivor. Abbott, a former Marine, has written a book about his war experiences in the South Pacific, and often talks to groups.

Brotherton has kept a lower profile. "I'm not a real hero," he said. "Mack is. I was just there."

Brotherton, like some others, questions whether Pearl Harbor should have happened.

He believes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew the attack was coming -- U.S. forces had broken the Japanese's diplomatic codes -- but chose not to stop it, hoping to thrust the nation into the global conflict.

"From all that I've read and from all I know," Brotherton said. "I'm convinced Roosevelt was in on it."

He remains mad, but not bitter. And if the attempt was to rally America around what Roosevelt called "a day of infamy," it worked on Brotherton.

As a civilian, he had rallied to keep the United States out of the war. After Dec. 7, he was convinced the nation must wage it.

[MrMustang1965]

He believes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew the attack was coming -- U.S. forces had broken the Japanese's diplomatic codes -- but chose not to stop it, hoping to thrust the nation into the global conflict.

"From all that I've read and from all I know," Brotherton said. "I'm convinced Roosevelt was in on it."

He remains mad, but not bitter. And if the attempt was to rally America around what Roosevelt called "a day of infamy," it worked on Brotherton.

As a civilian, he had rallied to keep the United States out of the war. After Dec. 7, he was convinced the nation must wage it.