Lee Ebner reflects on attack
By Jacob Glassner | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
As a young Navy signalman stationed in Pearl Harbor, Louisvillian Lee Ebner was high above the water in the signal bridge aboard the battleship USS West
Virginia on Dec. 7, 1941.
In the early hours of that infamous day, he came face-to-face with a Japanese pilot as the attack on Pearl Harbor began.
Seventy years later, Ebner, 92, vividly remembers the encounter.
“I saw a guy exactly like this,” said Ebner, pointing to a black-and-white photo of a Japanese pilot in Life magazine. “He had goggles over his eyes. He had a
mustache. That one plane came right over us. When I saw that red circle on the plane I knew they were Japanese. At first I didn’t know what they were.”
And then the mayhem began.
In his secure compartment about 60 feet above the water, Ebner began to hear muffled booms and rumbles as the ship was hit by aerial torpedoes.
“We took seven torpedoes (by some accounts more) and two bombs,” Ebner said. “One bomb went straight down through our bridge.”
The West Virginia was docked on Battleship Row alongside the USS Tennessee.
“We were on open water on our side; that’s how come we took all those torpedoes,” he said.
Taking on water, the West Virginia slowly sank to the bottom of the 40-foot-deep harbor.
“We were flooded. Our main deck was three feet above water,” Ebner said. “We lost a lot of men below decks.”
Many of those men were trapped below deck for several weeks before dying.
Ebner helped out where he could.
“I’d been on watch, and I had a full set of whites on,” he said. “Here this guy—I didn’t even know him—he’s standing there with just a pair of shorts on. He looks
at me and said, ‘You’ve got on two shirts; give me one of them shirts.’ I took the T-shirt off my back and gave it to him.”
The attack lasted a little more than two hours, and 106 men were killed aboard the West Virginia, including its captain, Mervyn Bennion.
“There’s so much going on, I guess you don’t have time to get scared,” Ebner said. “You’ve got things that you’re supposed to do, and you’re so busy ... that’s
what you do.”
After the attack, Ebner helped oil-covered crewmates from below deck onto rescue boats.
In all, more than 2,400 people died in the attack. Three ships were lost completely, while another 18 were damaged but later returned to service. The West
Virginia was repaired and returned to service July 4, 1944.
Ebner is chairman of the Kentucky Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, which currently has about 10 members.
“The reason Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor is they wanted control of the whole pacific, and they thought that the United States would give up and sign a peace
treaty,” he said. “Well, it didn’t turn out that way.”
Ebner, who used to draw editorial cartoons for The Southeast Outlook, attends Walnut Street Baptist Church. He was the staff artist for The Courier-Journal and
The Louisville Times for 32 years. His wife of 52 years, Wanda, died in January.
He grew up going to church and attended a Presbyterian prep school.
In his six years in the Navy during World War II, he saw some unspeakable sights while taking part in battles such as Saipan, Peleliu and Iwo Jima in the
Pacific, but he maintained his faith.
“You can’t blame God for things that go on in this world—all the tragedies,” he said.
He survived yet another close call aboard the destroyer USS Newcomb, which was hit by five Kamikaze suicide planes during the Battle of Okinawa.
“I was lucky at Pearl Harbor, but I was really lucky to survive that one,” he said.