The USS Nevada was one of eight battleships docked at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
U.S. Navy archives
Eighty-three years after the Japanese surprise attack rattled the serenity of a Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the country remembers the sacrifices.
The Dec. 7, 1941 attack destroyed or damaged many of the military installations on Oahu.
Congress declared war on Dec. 8.
In the Silver State, residents honor the sailors and Marines who served on the USS Nevada while a memorial pays homage to the sailors and Marines who died on the battleship USS Arizona. Hundreds more died on the other ships on Battleship Row including the California, Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia.
The Utah, a converted target ship, was docked on the other side of Ford Island.
Despite the attack, the USS Nevada built up steam, left its mooring and attempted to reach the ocean. The Japanese bombs proved so deadly that the ship’s officers, fearing the blazing and listing Nevada might capsize or sink in the channel, decided to beach her.
Two hours after the beaching, however, the Nevada floated free as the tide rose. The Japanese planes had returned to their six carriers offshore, and harbor tugs were able to move the shattered Nevada and beach her a second time on the sandy bottom of Waipio Point.
Fires continued to burn aboard the Nevada until 11 p.m. The injured and dead were transported ashore. Two Nevada crewmen were subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor and 15 received the Navy Cross for heroism during the attacks.
Charles T. Sehe, who became a sailor in November 1940 with his parents’ permission, served on the USS Nevada from Jan. 18, 1941 to July 31, 1945. Sehe, the longest serving sailor on the Nevada, died Nov. 3. Richard Ramsey, 101, is believed to be the only remaining survivor of the Nevada.
The ship earned the first of seven World War II battle stars on Dec. 7 and the second battle star at Attu in the Aleutian Islands from May 11 to 30, 1943, and third battle star on June 6, 1944, by destroying German bunkers for the Fourth Infantry Division at Utah Beach. She earned two more stars in Europe before returning to the Pacific Theater. The Nevada earned her sixth and seventh battle stars by destroying Japanese gun emplacements when Marines captured Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945.
Of the four vessels that sunk, the Arizona suffered the most casualties, 1,177 sailors and Marines with the majority entombed in the battleship.
Three sailors who grew up in Nevada were serving on the USS Arizona — Richard Eugene Gill, seaman first class Richard Walter Weaver and Eric Young. Their bodies were not recovered.
Gill attended schools in Wells and Reno and earned his diploma from Montello High School. According to the USS Arizona Memorial, Gill’s father worked for the railroad and his mother was a homemaker. When Gill enlisted in the Navy in 1940, his family lived in the Eureka County ranching community of Beowawe where he worked as a grocery clerk.
Born in Fallon, the 18-year-old Weaver enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 27, 1940, and performed the duties of standing watch and serving as a gunner while on the ship. His parents were Ray Rhese and “Marge” Lois (McCuistion) Weaver. Ray Weaver, a veteran of World War I, gave his son permission to enlist. Years later, Weaver’s father learned his son had been kicked out of school for arguing with his teacher.
According to Weaver’s record, he posthumously earned the Purple Heart, American Defense Service Medal with Fleet Clasp, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with star and the WWII Victory Medal.
The Reno Evening Gazette described Young as a popular young man who graduated from Reno High School in 1934 and then attended the University of Nevada for two years. Young left Nevada after receiving an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and graduated in 1940.
The 1940 yearbook described Young as a young man of the West: “An unfailing sense of humor coupled with an above-the-average mentality have enabled Eric to remain himself in spite of a rigorous academic training. At heart he is still a lad of the ‘Wild West.’ He can be recognized from afar (you’ll hear him before you see him) by his characteristic laugh, which more than once has sent whole theaters into hysterics.”
Young was commissioned an ensign at graduation.
