American Valor Quarterly Issue 8 - Winter 2010/2011 | Page 8

the badly wounded guys onto the raft before tying myself to it,
as well. I kept asking about Bud this whole time. Finally, I saw
him coming toward me on a raft with three other guys. I told
him I didn’t know what happened to him, but he said it was
alright, because we were all together now.

U.S. Navy Photo

All of a sudden, one of the guys yelled, “There she goes!” And
there was the Roberts, the bow up, slowly sinking stern first. There
wasn’t a dry eye among us. Many of my shipmates went down
with that ship.
About five minutes later, someone yelled, “Look what’s coming!”
I turned to find a Japanese heavy cruiser heading straight for us.
It continued on, straight at us, until I was certain we would be
run over. But just before reaching us, he made a starboard turn
and went right by, going at least 28 knots. A Japanese captain on
the port side saluted us as he went by and a guy in the bow
began taking pictures of us in the water. The cruiser created a
In the face of the Japanese onslaught, the crews of the American
huge wake that knocked all the guys out of their rafts. We had to
destroyers and destroyer escorts showed remarkable courage, steaming
load them all back in again. By the time we got everyone back
headlong toward their foes in an effort to counterattack with their
torpedoes. The tenacity of the American surface ships and aircraft led
into the rafts, it was eerily quiet. There was nobody there but us.
Kurita to believe he was facing a much stronger foe. Above, the Japanese We fixed ourselves up as best we could and tried to help the
cruiser Chikuma maneuvers after sustaining torpedo damage. Chikuma
guys who were bleeding. The men who ha