A Witness to HISTORY
Days of Infamy Remembered From James Leavelle
Jim Leavelle is a veteran of the U. S. Navy and a survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII.
After suffering an injury aboard ship during a violent typhoon, Leavelle left the Navy and eventually took up a 25-year career as a police officer and detective with the Dallas Police Department.
During his time as a Dallas homicide detective, Leavelle was the first person to interrogate Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination of President John F. Kenney and the murder of Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit.
“ The man in the tan hat,” he was escorting Oswald during a prison transfer when Jack Ruby infamously opened fire on Oswald, killing the suspected sniper.
Leavelle joined the American Veterans Center and World War II Veterans Committee’ s Annual Veterans Conference last Veterans Day to share his incredible story as an eyewitness to two of the most infamous moments in American history. This is his story.
I
decided to join the Navy in 1940, and was first assigned to U. S. S. Hammon, a destroyer that operated alongside an aircraft carrier moving in and out of Pearl Harbor. Before the war came, we’ d go out to sea and the pilots would practice landing on the flat top of the aircraft carrier. Our role was to go out beside them and offer support in the event that one of the planes went overboard off one side of the ship. We had a small boat that hung off the side of the destroyer and it could drop in the water in an instant to pick up any men in the overboard plane.
We were proud of the fact that we never lost a pilot, although we did lose a plane a couple of times.
Some months later I was assigned to the U. S. S. Whitney, a destroyer tender which carried supplies for the destroyers at Pearl Harbor. It was sometime in May or June of 1941 that we went on full alert due to concerns that we would be going to war with Japan. Still, it was kind of like a“ boy who hollered wolf” situation. We’ d go on alert for a week or two, which would mean we couldn’ t go ashore during that time, and then it would die down before we were put back on alert a week or two later. It just so happened that when Dec. 7, 1941 rolled around, there wasn’ t an alert in place.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked just before 8 a. m. that morning on December 7, I was aboard our ship and we had just been served breakfast. The Japanese couldn’ t have picked a better day to carry out the attack. We were paid twice monthly and December 6 happened to be our pay day,
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