For days after the shattering attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, as America headed into full-scale war with Japan, news stories alluded to the U.S. ships that had been wiped out in the onslaught. But news accounts were incomplete, confused and, in some cases, censored. Not until the Dec. 13 article was the USS Utah mentioned by name in the Deseret News.
"The Utah, the target ship lost, had not been used as a combatant ship for many years," the newspaper said. "It was subjected to a furious attack, because, according to U.S. Naval Secretary Frank Knox, the Japanese thought they were knocking out an aircraft carrier."Decommissioned as a warship in 1931 because new maritime technology had made her obsolete, the Utah had been stripped down to serve as a target for gunners and pilots. They fired water- or sand-filled bombs at her main deck, which had been lined with 12-by-12-inch timbers, making it appear somewhat like an aircraft carrier.
Orem resident Thomas E. Adams, then 19, served aboard the ship that was his home state's namesake. It was his job to count the "hits" made by trainees.On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, he was sleeping in, because he had worked until 1:30 a.m.
"I was awakened by a terrific explosion and a sudden lurch of the ship," Adams wrote in a 1963 letter to Robert A. Sumbot, who was seeking information for a master's thesis.
The bombs continued to hit the Utah, and "each explosion brought more timber and other material into the boathouse," Adams wrote. "I had no idea what was happening, but for a brief second I guessed that they were dropping target bombs on us in the harbor." As the shelling continued, he became terrifyingly aware that this attack was real.
"I jumped from my bunk and dropped down the hatch to the next deck, making my way toward the ladder leading to topside and safety, I hoped." Crude oil and debris were building up in the passageway and the scene was one of total confusion, he recalled. An officer had ordered men to stay in one part of the ship, but Adams defied the order in his determination to leave the canting vessel. As the ship rolled onto its side and sank into the harbor, 54 men died, including those trapped in that part of the vessel.
Adams was one of the lucky ones who swam to shore. In his letter almost 20 years after the fact, he wrote of the enormity of what was happening, the Japanese planes continuing to make strafing runs, the U.S. ships "firing back while they were sinking and fires terrific to behold."
For the next few days, his home was a trench on Ford Island, where he was given a gun and assigned to patrol a section of fence.
Of the USS Utah, which remains under the water at Pearl Harbor, Adams wrote that she was "not a ship of beauty but was considered the ugly duckling of the Pacific Fleet. She was built solid and durable, and you could feel her strength and knew she could weath-er any storm or gale. . . . She was a proud ship not only under full steam, but also in death, where she took untold and devastating explosions below the waterline as well as the scalping topside. She was indeed magnificent in her struggle to survive the terrible assault."
The concept of a warship commemorating the Beehive State was born June 2, 1903, when Navy Secretary William H. Moody accompanied President Theodore Roosevelt on a visit. Moody's promise that a ship would be named for Utah brought cheers from the crowd gathered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
It was six years later when the Navy announced construction of two "Dreadnaught" battleships, one to be christened "Utah." Approved by Congress on May 12, 1908, the mammoth ship was constructed by New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden, N.J.
It was a Florida-class ship, displacing more than 28,000 tons and armed with the latest in naval weaponry of its day. Almost a thou-sand men served as its officers and crew.
In October 1909, Utah Gov. William Spry was asked to select a sponsor for the traditional launching. He chose his 18-year-old daughter, Mary Alice. On Dec. 18 the Utah contingent left by rail for Philadelphia. It was hosted by a former Utahn, Lt. Cmdr. Henry A. Pearson, the prospective executive officer of the USS Utah.
With ice chunks floating down the Delaware River on Dec. 23, Miss Spry, described in a newspaper account as lovely in a fur-trimmed white coat and carrying a large bouquet of sego lilies, took her place on a special platform built over the bow of the battleship. Navy architect James E. Swan gave her instructions, and at exactly 10:53 a.m. she smashed a bottle of champagne on the gray steel, proclaiming, "I christen thee Utah. Godspeed."
Thousands who watched the launching cheered, joined by whistles, sirens and bells. They watched as the behemoth slid into the choppy whitecaps of the Delaware.
It was an auspicious day for the Utah delegation, despite the mild grumbling of some non-Mormons who read something into the fact that the ship was christened on the birth anniversary of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith.
During World War I, the Utah was a convoy vessel, and at the end of the war she carried President Woodrow Wilson to Europe for historic League of Nations meetings. In 1928, President Herbert Hoover was a passenger, en route home from a goodwill trip to South America.
In keeping with custom that the namesake state provide a silver service for a navy vessel, Spry initiated a drive for schoolchildren to contribute for the USS Utah.
Beginning in February 1911, nickels, dimes and quarters began to arrive from all parts of the state as students donated to "their" ship's silver service. In all, 26,477 children contributed.
A committee selected Gorham Co., represented locally by the J.H. Leyson Co., to create a design for the service. The set included 102 pieces, with an 8-gallon punch bowl engraved with a profile of the new battleship on one side and a view of the Wasatch Mountains opposite. Twenty-seven cups represented Utah's 27 counties at that time, and the water pitcher was engraved with Devil's Slide and a view of the Bingham copper mine.
But it was the coffee server that created a storm of protest. It depicted Mormon colonizer Brigham Young, a pioneer monument and the Salt Lake Temple. Erna Von R. Owen, a non-LDS woman, objected. Although she was only a short-term Utahn, she waged a vicious battle from her home in Upper Montclair, N.J., to have the piece removed from the set before it was presented to the ship.
Soliciting support from important Americans and journalists, Owen lambasted the silver piece and even took her crusade to the Congressional Naval Affairs Committee, which gave her a lukewarm hearing. Articles "reeking with falsehood," according to most Utahns, appeared in several pub-li-ca-tions.
In the end, D.C. Jackling, a prominent non-Mormon mining magnate who headed the Utah committee overseeing the silver service, wrote to the congressional committee that few Utahns, Mormon or non-Mormon, had any ob-jec-tion to the design and "those who have gone without the state to raise such objections have no material interests in the state, nor do they represent any such interests." Owens' claims were "false in all essential particulars," he wrote.
The furor quickly died, and in November 1911 a Utah delegation, accompanied by the Tabernacle Choir and Utah-born actress Hazel (Tout) Dawn, traveled to Camden to present the silver service to Capt. William Benson.
Arrayed along a 25-foot table between two 12-inch gun turrets on the USS Utah's deck, the impressive set was covered by a large flag until its unveiling. New verses were added to the song, "Utah We Love Thee," for the occasion, and a set of flags from the Utah Grand Army of the Republic and Utah Spanish-American War Veterans was presented along with the silver service.
After the USS Utah was decommissioned, the silver was returned to the state and displayed first in the Capitol and later in the Utah Historical Society museum. In January 1975, the set was stolen. The ship's bell was obtained by the historical society, and in 1973 her official flag was donated to Utah by a Californian who was one of three sailors who rescued the flag before the Utah sank.
The 88th Congress enacted a bill providing that an American flag would fly over the remains of the ship, entombed in water near Ford Island. Each year, a special tribute is paid the Utah and other ships sunk in the furious two-hour 1941 attack that embroiled the entire globe in war.