Earl D. Allen, Kaysville, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, June 12, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 38

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EARL D. ALLEN J 12 2000 will put in for thirty days leave first. The yeomen said "You might a w 11 put in ~ r forty-five, you can get that just as quick as you will thirty." o I changed to it£ rty-fi days. I turned that request into the log room in the morning before I went to my station, and at noon I checked in the log room and they said, "Oh, yes we have already sent over the request for your transportation back to the states." So I came back to the states spent my forty-five days. When the forty-five days was up, I reported into the receiving station at Terminal Island off of Long Beach, California. I stayed there until December 1, 1941. I caught the tanker Neosho with a full load of aviation gas and bunker fuel on board. We sailed out of San Pedro harbor, December 1, 1941. We pulled into Pearl Harbor, stopped at Hickam field and pumped off some aviation gas there. Not all of it, but at sunset they quit pumping aviation gas and we moved around, and we were tied up right in battleship row. I have got a big picture in here, but if you want copies of them, why, to go with your-there's the setup in Pearl Harbor. The circled one is the Neosho. Every one of those planes would come down to get the battleships, come right straight toward us. Of course, I didn't have a battle station on the Neosho. So when the bomb-I finished breakfast and was standing on the fantail back into the ship having a cigarette, illegally-smoking light was out-but I seen probably the first dive bomber that dropped a bomb on Ford Island. I seen the bomb drop, and my thought was, "Gee, that is the silliest place for bombing practice on Sunday morning." About that time, the second plane was in a steep enough dive and could see the flaming assholes on the Japanese wings. I said, "Practice, hell, this is war." So we were supposed to muster in the mess hall, the passengers. So there was a 15