Ray Chavez
Witness of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor whose experiences of combat left him shaking
RAY CHAVEZ, who has died aged 106, was the oldest living survivor of the surprise attack by the Japanese on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7 1941, which devastated the Pacific Fleet and brought America into the Second World War.
Although Chavez had gained prominence in recent years urging younger generations not to forget the sacrifices made by his, for decades after the war he had shied away from commemorations. Nor had he wanted to speak of what he had witnessed. By 1945, such had been his experiences that he was unable to stop shaking and on being discharged a doctor had tried to send him to hospital suffering from “combat fatigue”.
In the early hours of December 7 1941, the 28-year-old Chavez was at the helm of the minesweeper USS Condor – a converted fishing boat – in the approach channel to Pearl Harbor. He recalled that at about 03.45 a lookout spotted a submarine nearby. “All I could see was the periscope, about eight inches or so,” remembered Chavez. Several hours later, the Japanese midget craft would be sunk by the Ward, firing America’s first shots of the war.
Meanwhile, the sighting having been reported, Condor had finished her patrol and Chavez had gone home to sleep. An hour or so later, he was abruptly woken by his wife, Margaret: “Get up, we’re being attacked … come on, the whole Harbor’s on fire!”
“So, she finally convinced me to go out and look at it, and sure enough the whole Harbor was smoking and on fire,” said Chavez in an interview recorded for the Library of Congress. “And by that time there was a torpedo plane flying over, a Japanese torpedo plane, kept flying over our house and very low, and he was going with torpedoes, he was going to drop them off and fly right across the channel to the battleships.”
All eight warships in Battleship Row were damaged, and four sunk, during the early-morning raid by more than 350 Japanese aircraft.
Taken with the destruction of three cruisers and 188 aeroplanes, the attack succeeded in its aim of crippling the fleet’s potential for intervening in the Japanese advance across the Asian Pacific. More than 3,580 Americans were killed and wounded at Pearl Harbor.
With his brother, who also served in the Condor, Chavez made his way to the ship, which was preparing to sweep the channel for mines. However, a destroyer steaming out to sea at high speed cut through the magnetic cables that Condor used for this. She was ordered to tie up in the harbour for repairs.
There, Chavez saw the aftermath of the attack – “all the destruction on the ships that were torpedoed and bombed and all the bodies that were scattered around in the oil.”
Afraid that the Japanese would return, the authorities evacuated the likes of Chavez’s family to a barracks in the hills. During the next three weeks he was on duty continuously and neither he nor Margaret knew if the other was alive. His wife was then sent to San Diego, and he did not see his family for about a year.
Rising through the ranks of quartermasters to become Chief Petty Officer, Chavez first helped to fit out new ships in San Francisco, taking the posting to be nearer his family. Then from 1944, as US forces began to storm Japanese island strongholds in the Pacific, he took part in many operations ferrying tanks and marines preparing for amphibious assaults, including the invasion of the Philippines.
Chavez had vivid memories of kamikaze attacks by Japanese pilots. Serving in USS La Salle, he was stationed on the bridge which was often their target. He spoke of watching one aircraft as it came closer and closer until it veered off at the last moment and struck the neighbouring ship.
“He said that after a couple of the battles he saw, he started to shake,” recalled his daughter, Kathleen. “First it was his hands, then it was his arms. By the time the war was over, his whole body shook.” Worried that if he was taken to hospital he would later find it harder to get a job, Chavez chose to treat himself by working outdoors as a gardener, and after two years found that his symptoms had disappeared.
Raymond Barron Chavez was born at San Bernardino, California, on March 10 1912. His parents were Mexican immigrants – though he learnt at 104 that his DNA showed he had largely Native American ancestors – and he grew up in San Diego, where his family had a wholesale flowers business.
He had married by his early twenties, and in 1938, when he was 26, he joined the Naval Reserves. His daughter revealed that he experienced racial discrimination both at school and in the armed forces.
He and his wife adopted Kathleen from an orphanage in 1957, when she was five, as two years earlier their first daughter, her husband and their infant grand-daughter had all been killed in a road accident. Kathleen Chavez subsequently became the first woman to serve as a jet engine mechanic in the US Navy.
Chavez retired at the age of 96, having been a groundsman at the University of California San Diego for 30 years and then having looked after the gardens of two churches. His wife died in the 1980s.
At 101, he took up pumping iron and working out with a personal trainer to recover from a bad fall. His age, and his lucidity, encouraged him to begin speaking publicly at events about Pearl Harbor, of which only about 200 veterans now survive, and earlier this year he was received at the White House by President Trump.
Chavez expressed his willingness to serve his country again if called but admitted that at his time of life “they probably wouldn’t have me now”.
His daughter survives him.
Ray Chavez, born March 10 1912, died November 21 2018