Despite the dates on their grave markers, Louis Costin, Ronald Endicott, and Clifford Olds did not die on December 7th, 1941. This was merely a polite fiction meant to spare their families further anguish.
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[Source]The three men were assigned to the USS West Virginia, which “had taken at least six torpedoes and two bombs, burned for 30 hours, and settled in the mud of the harbor bottom, its main deck covered in oily water” from the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Although the three men had survived the attack, there was no way to access the airtight compartment they were in.
Stuck under the waterline as they were, they banged on the walls to signal that they were alive, but there was nothing that could be done. “Cut a hole to get someone out and you’d flood the whole thing. Use a torch and risk an explosion.” And given the sheer scale of the destruction, refloating the West Virginia would have to wait until May 1942.
But for a long while afterward, the banging continued.
“No one wanted guard duty that put him within earshot of the West Virginia, especially on quiet nights. They would do anything to trade posts so they wouldn’t have to hear the desperate — almost tireless — cry for help.”
At some point, though, the banging stopped. Months later, when salvage operations finished and recovery operations began, “sailors removed the remains of three men from storeroom A-111, clad in their blues and jerseys.”
Most hauntingly, they noted the calendar on the wall – “A foot high, 14 inches long. A red ‘X’ scratched through the dates from Dec. 7 through Dec. 23.”
[Source: 16 days to die at Pearl Harbor]
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