Scott Coulson Sr. is a survivor and veteran of Japan's Dec. 7, 1941, attack against United States Navy ships at Pearl Harbor. That fateful morning propelled the U.S. into World War II. / Crystal Chatham The Desert Sun
Scott Coulson
AGE: 91.
HOMETOWN: La Quinta.
MILITARY BRANCH: U.S. Navy, Sept. 11, 1940 — Sept. 11, 1946.
RANKS: USS West Virginia BB48 — Fireman 1st Class. USS Ellet DD398 — Machinist 1st Class. USS Sarsfield DD837 — Machinist 1st Class. Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942. Capture and defense of Guadalcanal, Aug. 10, 1942 — Feb. 8, 1943.
SPECIAL NOTE: Pearl Harbor survivor.
FAMILY: Wife Earlene; two children; seven grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren.
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Scott Coulson was on the third deck of the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
“I had just finished eating breakfast the morning that thing started,” Coulson said, recalling the moments before the first of Japanese planes hit the base.
“And I got up from the table and took about five steps and the first torpedo hit and we went sailing across the deck.”
After the first torpedo, the command came to man battle stations, Coulson said.
“Mine happened to be in the bottom of the ship,” in the electric motor room.
The West Virginia was driven by four huge electric motors — 35 to 40 feet in diameter, he said.
“By the time we got down there — several decks below — to get down into this compartment, there was a ladder leading down into it, which was about 50 feet below that deck,” Coulson said.
“The only thing connecting the ladder was two bolts at the top of the ladder. There were four of us there. None of us wanted to go down there because we didn't know if we were going to get back out.”
He went anyway, and as he began making his way toward the bowels of the battleship, an announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“I was down about four steps on the ladder and the (order was given) to abandon ship,” Coulson said.
He said a couple more torpedoes hit and the ship began taking on more water.
“We started to go topside (and) by the time we got to the third deck, water was 6 inches deep.”
He finally made his way to the top deck and started making his way out of the ship.
“The West Virginia was tied up to the Tennessee, which was tied up to the big cement pillars,” Coulson said. “The Arizona was right behind us and already blew up.”
They crossed over to the Tennessee on ropes and after making it over to the cement pillars that held the ships at anchor, “we swam to Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor.”
A U.S. Naval Air Station occupied the island at the time of the bombing.
“The rest of that day was just (spent) dodging Japanese planes that were flying over all the time,” he said.
He and some fellow sailors made it over to a dispensary at Ford Island, where buses were dropping off the wounded.
“The doctors were taking care of what they could, but they were coming in so fast and furious,” Coulson said.
The next day, Coulson and 10 other men from the West Virginia were assigned to the Navy destroyer USS Ellet DD398.
Coulson said he spent the entire war on the ship, which traveled 100,000 miles during the first year of the war.
“The next day, we left and were gone for 30 days, so nobody at home knew whether I was alive or dead,” he said.
On the other side of the Pacific, Coulson's future wife, Earlene, waited and worried after getting news of the attack.
“I was actually in church with my dad,” she said. “The preacher came out and announced that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed by the Japanese.”
She started to leave the church to go home, but her father stopped her.
“My dad said, ‘Stay here, pray. That will be better than everything else' I could do.”
Earlene Coulson, who was living in Eagle Rock at the time, worked at a Western Union office in Los Angeles.
She came home from work day after day, hoping to hear news about her husband.
“It was about a month later that we found out he was all right,” she said. “I cried, of course, I was so happy.”
“The first month of the war, we were everywhere,” Scott Coulson said. “They brought food to us, they brought fuel to us, we didn't stop the first 30 days. We were all over the Pacific.”
USS Ellet plucked 35 pilots out of the water over the years during the war.
“The (aircraft carrier) Enterprise would give us 20 gallons of ice cream for everyone we turned back in,” he laughed.
Rescue missions
The USS Ellet performed rescue operations in the Solomon Islands after U.S. ships, including the USS Quincy and USS Astoria, were sunk at Guadalcanal in August 1942.
“That night, they were saying we picked up 650 guys out of the water from 1 in the morning until daybreak,” Coulson said. “It was raining so hard, you couldn't see the hand in front of your face.
“The destroyer is only about three feet off the water line, you can hang onto the lifeline and reach down into the water and pull people out, which is what we were doing,” Coulson said.
There was one doctor and one corpsman on the ship. “We were pulling them out of the water and they were putting them in the bunks down below,” he said.
“This one guy was holding onto a guy with one arm and a powder keg under the other arm keeping him afloat, and we pulled him up,” he said. “This guy had been dead so long he already started to stiffen up and this guy (holding him) didn't even realize it.
“Another guy, a Marine we pulled out of there, he said, ‘Sit me over out of the way, I just can't see where I'm going. I'm all right. Just set me where I'll be out of the way.' Of course the guy couldn't see, he didn't have a face. It had all been blown off.”
Many years later, after Coulson was out of the Navy, he had a memorable meeting with one of the men who also served in the Solomon Islands
“At one of our DD398 reunions, we had one of the fellows off the (USS) Quincy come — he lived in Florida — he got word that we were having a reunion and, he, at his own expense, flew up with his family to Missoula to attend this reunion.
“He said, ‘I want to thank you and my wife wants to thank you and my grandkids want to thank you for saving my life so that I can be here today to tell you about it. Thank you for saving my life that night and for picking us up out of the water off the Quincy,' which I thought was really, really nice,” Coulson said.
“But the DD398 is losing members. They're getting fewer and fewer all of the time. Not many of us left anymore. I'm turning 91 next month, so I guess that's why.”
