Oral History Interview with Robert C. Hughes, August 5, 1978 Page: 34
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Rughes
34I was down below decks. I was, I think, three decks down and
got my ,. , of course, when general quarters sounded, I went
on deeper down into the ship. So, no, I didn't see any planes,
I didn't see anything until, of course, six o'clock or
six-thirty that evening. It was still daylight, but it looked
dark to me when I got topside. All that black smoke just filled
the sky for as far as you could see. I guess my nerves began
to shatter a little bit then after I had seen what had happened.
It was pretty horrifying to see what the outcome of it was, Of
course, you've heard, and know, that if they'd have come back
maybe with another fleet, they would have had us. They would
have taken the whole island. We feel they would have, but, thank
goodness, they didn't.
What did you do during the following days and weeks?
Well, the next day they started , . . as soon as possible, they
started cleaning up and repairing. My clean-up detail was to
clean up the mess from the bombed area and the shrapnel and such
like. We were repairing the ship and trying to get it back into
maneuverability, They built .. ,you see, our degaussing cable
around the ship was broken in different places, so they had to
replace the degaussing cable, I was on a working party to bring
that degaussing cable from Ford Island. They built a ramp from
our ship over to the bank at Ford Island and had a two-way ramp--
off the ship on this ramp; on the ship on this ramp, It lookedMarcello:
Hughes:
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Marcello, Ronald E. & Hughes, Robert C. Oral History Interview with Robert C. Hughes, August 5, 1978, book, August 5, 1978; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc306943/m1/36/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Oral History Program.