Pearl Harbor Survivor Predicted Attack

Pearl Harbor Survivor Predicted Attack


Pearl Harbor veteran Francis Ritter holds a letter, postmarked December 5, 1941 from Pearl Harbor, which he sent to his girlfriend, now his wife, telling her, “If the Japs are going to hit, they’re going to hit us now.”

“I had just finished breakfast when the alarm sounded,” recalls Francis Ritter, now 78 years old and living in Wenonah, Deptford Township in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

Originally from Southeast Philadelphia, Ritter was a radioman 3rd class aboard the Nevada. “I was getting ready to go to the church service, mass, which was to be said on the aftdeck, just after morning colors. I didn’t hear the PA system, so when the alarm sounded I ran up on the bridge. I assumed it was a fire drill, but an officer nearly knocked me down. “Don’t you realized they’re Japs,” he said. I almost got shot and didn’t know it. Then went to my battle station.”

Also up the mast was a sailor in the Nevada’s crow’s nest with a .30 caliber machine gun. He was the first man to return fire and winged a torpedo bomber as it headed directly for the ship, giving the Nevada a brief reprieve.

When I came down from the mast I fought fires,” recalls Ritter, “and I helped out with injured and made myself available until I took over a field radio, one of our only means of communication at the time.”

Francis Ritter went on to serve on two carriers, both of which were sunk from under him, the Lexington at the battle of Coral Sea and the Hornet at Santa Cruz, off Guadacanal. The former radioman became an amateur Ham radio operatior who occasionally talks with other Navy vets, including some former Nevada shipmates, via the Ham radio. “I had a buddy on the Arizona, radioman Wes Bishop, who is still down there buried with his ship,” said Ritter, who is still bitter about the battle. “We got campaign medals, but Pearl Harbor was a debacle that we shouldn’t be honored for. We were caught with our pants down even though radar picked them up coming in. But that was just thrown to the wayside. We should have been warned.”