THE NEW YORK TIMES – Jessie Mahaffey, who was scrubbing the deck of the U.S.S. Oklahoma when it was hit by Japanese torpedoes at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and who was among the last living service members who survived the surprise attack, died on March 1 in in a nursing center near his longtime home in Many, La. He was 102.
Mr. Mahaffey later survived the sinking of another Navy ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese in the Pacific. In an interview on Sunday, John Mahaffey, his grandson, said that Mr. Mahaffey would talk about his time in the Navy only when his relatives would ask him about it, which they did often.
A month or less before one of the ships was attacked — John Mahaffey is fairly sure it was the Oklahoma — Mr. Mahaffey was given a new assignment and was moved from a room where powder was stored.
“He went from being in the hull to on the deck, and that saved his life,” his grandson said.
In December, Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS-TV of Shreveport, La., that Dec. 7, 1941, had started as a quiet Sunday.
He and five other sailors were chatting as they scrubbed the deck of the Oklahoma when they “heard a siren, saw planes and smoke,” he said, adding, “It must have only gone on for 45 minutes, but it was crazy.”
The Oklahoma was struck by as many as nine torpedoes. Within minutes, the battleship capsized, trapping hundreds of men below deck.
“It didn’t take that long to come back to the other side,” he said. “It turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water.”
He managed to swim to the U.S.S. Maryland, another battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor …
