[Article reprinted courtesy of the Honolulu Star Bulletin]
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
On his last trip to Hawaii two years ago, Pearl Harbor survivor Thomas C. Molay visited the resting place of his ship -- USS Utah -- which lies rusted off Ford Island after being sunk by the Japanese 63 years ago.
Thomas Molay: Death at 80 brings a WWII veteran back to Pearl Harbor
"He remembered being on its third deck," his widow, Dottie Molay, said. "It was then he said he wanted to go back there when he died."
Yesterday, Molay rejoined his shipmates.
"Tom was really pleased with what the Navy had done with the memorial," his widow said. "That's where he wanted to go. So I made up my mind: If that's what he wanted, that's what I would do."
Like many sailors serving on ships of the Pacific Fleet on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Molay, a photographer's mate, was sleeping in one of the berths of the USS Utah.
The Utah was moored on the west side of Ford Island. It had been commissioned as a battleship in 1911 but later it was turned into a target vessel. Its timber-reinforced decks may have given it the appearance of a carrier from the air.
As the crew on the Utah raised the American flag for morning colors, the first of two torpedoes struck the port side just before 8 a.m. Son John Molay, who lives in Waikiki, said his father told him later that after he felt the first explosion, "he went up on deck, and then the second torpedo hit the side of the ship.
"He had to jump off the ship and swim to shore. He was issued a rifle and ordered to start shooting at incoming aircraft."
Molay was 18 when he enlisted in August 1941. After surviving the Pearl Harbor attack, he served on the light cruiser USS Honolulu and with air squadrons at naval stations at Pensacola and Boca Chica in Florida. He lived in Borrego Springs, Calif., for 25 years and had a home maintenance business until 1985, when he retired.
He was the fifth Utah survivor whose ashes were placed in the third deck of the USS Utah.
His son said his father "felt a connection to Pearl Harbor. It was important to him. It was one of his last wishes, which I honored."
Thomas Molay died Feb. 4 at age 80 in Southern California after an extended illness of heart disease, pneumonia and a collapsed lung.
Capt. Ron Cox, commander of Pearl Harbor Naval Station, said "men like Molay (were) there when the call came and then stepped forth" in "the most single influential event."
Cox said today that in Baghdad and at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, "a new generation has stepped forth."
The sun broke through yesterday's late afternoon cloud cover as Molay's small black urn was lowered to three waiting Navy divers.
A red diving buoy and flag marked the location of the Utah's third deck as a Molay was "piped aboard" the Utah for the final time. The divers slipped below the surface to place his ashes in the hull of the ship.
On the 70-foot white concrete Pier 7, sailors fired off a three-volley rifle salute.
Overhead, the American flag fluttered at half staff as it has every day since 1972, when the monument was dedicated.
The Utah, one of the first vessels hit by the Japanese, capsized, entombing 58 sailors and the ashes of infant Nancy Lynn Wagner, who died at birth. Her father -- Chief Yeoman Albert Wagner -- had planned to have her ashes scattered at sea when the Utah pulled out of Pearl Harbor. Only the bodies of four were recovered.
Thirty Utah officers and 431 sailors survived the attack.
