My brother was transferred off after the Sullivan brothers, the five Sullivan brothers, were killed down there in the north of Guadalcanal. I earned all those 10 battle stars. I got up as high as a bosun mate second class, finally dropping to the master at arms force.

I was asleep in the port hangar that night the torpedoes struck us. It woke me up -- the shaking of the ship and the loud noise, explosion. And I looked across the quarterdeck and sparks and fire were coming out in the forward part of the ship. I folded up my cot. All I had was my shoes and skivvy shorts. I folded up my cot, went aft, crossed over to the starboard side, started to go forward to the master-at-arms' shack (to get his clothes) and somebody says, "You can't get forward."

About that time the ship started to list to the starboard side. I went up topside and decided to get a life jacket, then went over to the port side because they always said to go to the high side where the motor whaleboat was. The ship was listing more and more to the starboard, so I walked over to the starboard side and jumped in the water. And the next thing I knew when I started to swim -- they always said to get away from the ship so you wouldn't be sucked down when the ship went down -- next thing I knew somebody said, "Over here."

It was black. Well here was a raft and I hung on to the side until about the third day, when it thinned out. I was hanging on the side the first morning. Somebody yelled, "Sharks." And I know how scared I was. I was trying to get my seat and my body up out of the (water) near the raft and couldn't make it. You know I was scared about the sharks. But I was OK then. And no sharks bothered me then. And I noticed that, that night in the water I got real sick, threw up from the saltwater and by drinking the oil.

In the meantime I guess I had rubbed my eyes and I was half-blind for about three or four days, couldn't hardly see anything, just a blur.

Hallucinations
Then I'd finally gotten in the raft. And I remember some things like ... dreaming, I guess. Muddled. It's just blank. [After the rescue] I laid in bed lot of times at night trying to figure out what happened. Why this day? What happened? What? And it's just blank, a lot of it's blank.

I can remember dreaming that we were in the desert in Egypt and crawled up in this big sandbar and there was a big pool of wine. And I don't know if I was drinking saltwater then or not. And I know that the guys later on would swim up and say ... "Oh, the ship's just below our feet, we can see it, we're gonna dive down and get a drink of water." They'd dive down and come up and say, "Oh, that water was good." You know what they did? They would drink the saltwater. We tried to stop them, but lot of the guys you just couldn't talk to them. They were going out of their heads, I guess.

And later on, well, their throats would get swollen up and they'd have a miserable death.

And the guys later on fought one another; thinking there was Japs in our group they'd start fighting. That went on. Guys got so crazy after the sun beating down on them. I remember I wish I would have had a straight jacket put over my head. During the morning before the sun came up, I'd be shaking at the cold and wish the sun would come up. But then when the sun came up, after a while the oil all over me -- that thick oil stuck to me, that bunker fuel -- would heat up and start burning, and then I'd have to duck to try and cool off in water.

I think about the fourth day, my eyes cleared up where I could make things out, and I can remember this one big plane came and it seemed like everything was coming out of the sky. I remember this big lifeboat come floating down, three big parachutes, it landed not too far away from the group I was in, and some guy swam to it.

And that night we could see the light of that ship, that destroyer that turned the spotlight up in the clouds. Then later, I don't know, it was in the morning I guess, and some guys came over in one of these rubber life rafts that they had dropped and they gave us, you know, a little water. I can remember guys yelling, "Sharks," and I couldn't see 'em there for awhile on account of my eyes.

[The men] could see and hear their shipmates being eaten by sharks, screaming. You know, they were pulled under, but I was lucky 'cause I was in the group that had rafts and we was finally, all of us, out of the water. At first when the rafts were too crowded and we had to hang on to the side until it thinned out, guys gave up, just gave up. Guys swam away or were injured. Most of the guys that were injured didn't last too long anyway, with the beating they took. In the rafts you're in the water anyway, because you're just barely floating and the center of them is just open to the water, so you was just in the water all the time.

As far as our captain. Let the people know that he was innocent and that the Navy goofed up. [They should] stand up and be men and clear the captain and help us survivors. There's only a few of us left. Do it before there's none of us left.