Iowa chaplain was among first to die at Pearl Harbor

Posted by: "FCoolavin@aol.com" FCoolavin@aol.com

Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:04 am (PST)

All,
I posted this article from Catholic News Service several years ago. It is a good reminder of the bravery and courage of our military chaplains.  It deserves to be re-run on this Veterans Day.


J. Michael Finn
Ohio State Historian
Ancient Order of Hibernians
Columbus, Ohio

Iowa chaplain was among first to die at Pearl Harbor

By Patrick Downes Catholic News Service_ (http://www.catholicnews.com/index.html) 

HONOLULU (CNS) -- Father Aloysius H. Schmitt, a 32-year-old Navy chaplain frm Dubuque, Iowa, had just finished celebrating the 6:15 a.m. Sunday Mass on Dec. 7, 1941, on board the USS Oklahoma, a battleship in port at Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese struck.

The first torpedo hit the massive ship forward on the port side. A second hit the center. Torrents of water poured into the gaping holes caused by the explosions.

As the attack raged, Father Schmitt went to the ship's sick bay to minister to the wounded and dying. But within minutes it became clear that the Oklahoma itself was mortally stricken and the call was given to abandon ship.

The book ``Trapped at Pearl Harbor, Escape from the Battleship Oklahoma,'' by Stephen Bower Young, describes what happened next to the young chaplain. ``Trapped at his battle station on the second deck below when the ship went over, Father Schmitt helped several sailors escape through a porthole to safety,'' it says. ``When he in turn tried to squeeze through, he was unable to do so, quite possibly because of the breviary in his pocket.

``Then seeing that other sailors had entered the rapidly flooding compartment for a means of escape, Chaplain Schmitt insisted that he be pushed back inside to assist them. True to his commitments as a priest and a naval officer, he urged them on, helping them to safety out of the porthole before 
water engulfed him there.''

Jack Henkels, a Catholic park ranger at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, researched Father Schmitt's story during the 1990s. He wrote an article for the fall 1997 issue of the Arizona Memorial newsletter. Henkels cited the account of two eyewitnesses in his story. ``He told the men trying to pull him out (to) let him back in,'' Henkels wrote. ``They protested, saying that he would never get out alive, but he insisted, `Please let go of me, and may God bless you all.'''

Another account by Pearl Harbor chaplain Jesuit Father Francis X. O'Connor, published in the Oct. 5, 1944, issue of The Witness, newspaper of the Diocese of Dubuque, related the story as told to him by the shipman who had tried to save Father Schmitt. It said, ``The sailor did not want to let him go but finally yielded to his demands. The sailor hoped he was going in to clear his pocket but reports 
that Father seemed to think that there were others in the compartment by now.''

There were. After the priest helped them escape, the 35,000-ton ship gave a lurch, and less than 20 minutes after the first torpedo hit, it rolled over and settled into the mud in the harbor. Two-thirds of the crew survived the attack; 448 men died.

Father Schmitt was the first U.S. Catholic chaplain to be killed in World War II. The next day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, would have been the sixth anniversary of his ordination.

On Oct. 23, 1942, the Navy posthumously honored the chaplain with a Navy and Marine Corps Medal for ``distinguished heroism and sublime devotion to his fellow man.'' `His magnanimous courage and self sacrifice were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service,'' the citation said. ``He gallantly gave up his life for his country.''

In his book, Young questioned the appropriateness of the relatively minor honor: ``One can only wonder why the Navy did not see fit to grant Lt. Schmitt a much higher award, for he gave his life so that others might live, the highest sacrifice an individual can make.''

Father Schmitt is most likely buried at Punchbowl Cemetery in Hawaii, in a grave with about 400 other unidentified bodies recovered from the Oklahoma. His name is engraved there in the Courts of the Missing. He also is memorialized on a plaque at the USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center at Pearl Harbor along with the only other chaplain who died in the Japanese attack, Presbyterian Rev. Thomas L. Kirkpatrick of the USS Arizona.

A chapel was named after him at his alma mater, Loras College in Dubuque. Three years after his death, the Navy presented the chapel with a crucifix made from wood from the Oklahoma's teak deck, with the body of Christ cast from metal from the ship.

His chalice, bent in the attack, also was recovered from the ship and presented to the college.