Thompson Pearl Harbor - History Story

 Eighty years ago today, Irvin Thompson was exactly where he wanted to be. 

The 24-year-old Ketchikan resident had tried twice to get into the US Naval Academy in the mid-1930s and had eventually succeeded. When December 7, 1941 dawned, he was an ensign on the battleship USS Oklahoma. He had put in specifically for battleship duty after spending a training cruise on the USS Texas. 

When the Oklahoma capsized during the Japanese attack, Thompson was at his duty station in the battery control, the part of the ship that controlled the ships 10 14-inch main guns. More than 400 sailors on the ship died, including Thompson, when it capsized, and most were buried in a mass grave in Hawaii. Thompson was the first Alaskan to die in World War II. 

It would be nearly 70 years before Thompson’s remains were identified by DNA testing. He was reburied near the home of a distant cousin in California in 2008. 

Thompson was born in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1917 and his family moved to Ketchikan in 1922, according to a Ketchikan, Chronicle story on Dec. 16, 1941. 

Thompson grew up on the northern end of First Avenue, across the street from my mother, Merta (Smith) Kiffer. She was three years younger than Thompson and remembered he was “tall, dark haired and very handsome.” 

Thompson’s father, Andrew, worked for the city highway department. The Thompsons were related to the Schlais family that lived farther down First Avenue. 

Thompson attended the Charcoal Point School through elementary school and junior high, where he was a classmate of my father, Ken Kiffer. 

He went on to Ketchikan High School, at the Main School downtown, and was there from 1932 to 1935. 

According to the 1935 Kayhi yearbook, he was a member of the Rifle Club for three years and a member of the Student Body Association council and the basketball team his junior and senior years. The basketball team – called the Polar Bears back then - went 21-5 his senior year but lost to Wrangell and didn’t repeat as Southeast Champions, a title it had claimed Thompson’s junior year. 

In Thompson’s senior year he was class president and won the school “Declamation” contest by “defeating” Wesley Sande with a speech entitled “Born Rich.” Thompson also had a small part in the class play, a murder mystery called “The Sixth Key” which involved a rich uncle and his five battling heirs. 

Thompson was the salutatorian for the 21-member Ketchikan High School Class of 1935. 

His senior motto was “There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one’s ability.” 

After graduation, he applied for the US Naval Academy but was not accepted. So, he went to Seattle and studied at the University of Washington for a year. In 1936, he was accepted into the Naval Academy. He graduated from the Academy in 1940 and was commissioned an Ensign in the navy. 

The 1940 edition of the “Lucky Bag,” the academy yearbook, chronicled Thompson’s time there. The class of 1940 was a particularly well-traveled one, with voyages to England, the Arctic and the Caribbean. More notably, the students also visited both Japan and Germany and took note of the military growth in both countries in the late 1930s.  

“Although he’s forever boasting of the advantages of rugged life in salmon country, this tall good looking ‘snake’ was born in New Jersey,” an anonymous writer noted on Thompson’s page in the 1940 Lucky Bag. “That probably explains why he’s forever bitterly disclaiming Maryland winters and seeking to rig a radiator around his bunk. His practical, varied sailing experience has been a ready help to those of us who are not so salty.” 

The page history also noted that Thompson did not focus on academics. 

“ Academics, excluding a temporary lull over which he had no control (another drag), have been merely something between ketch trips and a game of basketball,” the Lucky Bag noted. “An amiable disposition and unusual common sense should find ‘Igloo’ a rich future, skoal!” 

Thompson’s nickname was a compromise, according to the yearbook. Originally, he was called “Eskimo” because of his Alaskan background, but he preferred “Igloo” and that stuck. The Lucky Bag noted that he was on the “Boat Club” for years and “Ketch Captain” his senior year. He was also on the “basketball squad” his freshman year. 

Photographs in the yearbook show Thompson sailing on an academy “knockabout sloop” and also attending a meeting of “ketch captains.”  

Of the 350 1940 graduates of the Academy, 70 died during World War II. Ten died at Pearl Harbor, seven on the USS Arizona and three on the Oklahoma, according to US Navy records. 

It is not clear from the records, exactly when he joined the crew of the Oklahoma, but shipmate Ed Vezey noted in a 2008 email that Thompson was on the ship when Vezey joined the crew in April of 1941. 

A glimpse of Thompson’s shipboard came to light in 2011, when the Tongass Historical Museum received a letter that Thompson had sent to his Academy roommate in July of 1941. “Bos’n” Joe Rinschler. Rinschler had also been a member of the “Boat Club.” After the war, he would name one of his sons after Thompson.

“Dear Joe, “the letter begins. “I have been properly chastised for my long period of no letters that now I’m almost ashamed to write. You know me and my writing Joe, it’s just sort of natural for me to go along for months without even dropping a line to anyone, even my best friends.” 

In the letter, Thompson talks about his girlfriend Isabelle who had met in Maryland and how it had been more than a year since he had seen her. He congratulates Rinschler on marry a woman who was a great cook, or so he had been told by other shipmates who had visited Rinschler in his home in New York. 

He noted he had been in Hawaii since October of 1940 and that the Navy was clearly expanding quickly. He noted that the “Academy men” like himself were out-numbered on the ship by the “90-day wonders,” the reserve officers. 

He noted that he wasn’t allowed to say much about his duties because of censorship. 

“All I can say is that it's practically on a war time basis and at times it's really hell,” Thompson wrote. “When we are at sea it's practically G.Q. (general quarters) all the time and even up until ten in the evening.  I've been standing top watches for a month or so now all except when we are in special maneuvers and at times it's quite a strain on you.  This ship is about the most advanced as far as top watches for our class goes and even 'tho I'm glad of it, it's still quite a responsibility for a year-old Ensign at night on a darkened ship.” 

He was also having “issues” in his main battle station. 

“I'm doing all right I guess all except for a few little points… one of them being the assistant main Battery Officer with whom there is a mutual dislike,” Thompson wrote. “I have control of the main battery in plot at various times & he doesn't seem to appreciate my telling him his mistakes over the main phone circuit.  But as far as I can see he's practically a Lt. Com.  and shouldn't have to be told about mistakes by a Junior Ensign. He should know better than to make mistakes.  I saw my 6-month fitness report & had a very good one too.  My lowest mark was a 3.3 and all the rest excepting one 3.5 were all above 3.7.  So, if I can keep it up I may make it yet.” 

Thompson did note that he was able to fit in a little bit of a social life. 

“I've been going ashore quite a bit lately not because I enjoy it so much but I'd go nuts out here if I didn't find something to do,” he wrote. “I've been dating various girls out here but it's just for something to do, my heart is still very much in Tennessee.  And besides, if I didn't date, I'd get in a rut & wouldn't know how to act around girls, can't let that happen can I?  I don't drink much of anything except to go on my ‘quarterly binge’ which I always regret the next day.  This is the worst place in the world for a hangover.” 

Thompson promised to get together with Rinschler the next time he was in “the states” and signed off  “Sincerely, Igloo.” 

Ensign Ed Vezey knew Ensign Thompson on the Oklahoma from the spring of 1941 up until Pearl Harbor. He said, in a series of emails from Colorado in December of 2008, that he often talked with Thompson in the junior officer’s wardroom. He confirmed that Thompson’s battle station was in the main battery (gun) control area of the ship. 

Vezey remembered a specific visit that the Oklahoma made to the San Francisco not long before Pearl Harbor. 

On August 22, 1941, the Oklahoma left Pearl Harbor for the naval base at San Pedro, California, but – according to the official history of the “USS Oklahoma, BB-37” a book written in 2008 by Jeff Phister, Thomas Hone and Paul Goodyear and published by the University of Oklahoma Press, the battleship encountered a massive storm en route that killed one sailor (who was washed overboard) and injured several others. Damage to the starboard engine shaft caused the ship to vibrate heavily and so it was sent to the Navy shipyard at Hunter’s Point near San Francisco rather than San Pedro near Los Angel;es. 

That led to the following adventure, according to Vezey. 

“Igloo Thompson was a really great guy, always pleasant and friendly,” Vezey wrote in 2008. “…Igloo and I were just bumming around the town (San Francisco) – no particular plan – just a couple of guys with no particular destination –SF lent itself to that mode in those days.” 

They went into a bar and began talking to a middle-aged woman. 

“She was a bit in her cups,” Vezey wrote. “In the course of the evening she told us she had an invitation to dinner at the home of a nice widow lady who had a lovely daughter, and in due time she invited us to join her – imagine. Well, why not? She gave us the address and at the appointed hour Igloo and I caught a taxi and headed out – quite sober, mind you. Igloo was not given to excess and I was following his good example.” 

The hostess was shocked when they showed up. 

“You can imagine the consternation of the hostess with two totally strange ‘sailors’ met in a bar univitedly coming to her home,” Vezey continued. “Her relief was palpable when two clean cut young officers of the line showed up at her door and she was very gracious. Turned out she was ‘babysitting’ this lush as a favor to a friend. I still remember the names of our hostess and daughter, Mrs. E.B. Palmer and her, yes, lovely daughter, Alice Hemmings. We had a lovely evening and stayed late.  Crazy? Yes, but when you are young and a bit bored and feeling like you can lick the world, why not?” 

The adventure continued, shipboard. 

“In turn, Igloo and I invited Mrs. Palmer and Alice out to dinner on the ship and they accepted which makes them as adventurous as we were,” Vezey wrote. “The sight of a beautiful battleship in dry dock is pretty doggone impressive and the guys in the Junior Officer’s wardroom made the gals feel like royalty – Igloo was disarmingly boyish and charming anyway and it was a great time. They were a bit overwhelmed with the size and the spotless cleanliness of a ship that size.” 

Vezey was a reserve officer and even though Thompson had earlier written to Rinschler about his dislike of the so-called “90-day wonders,” he clearly treated Vezey well. 

“A measure of Igloo’s character was the fact that he was an Academy graduate and I was a reserve officer – most Academy grads had some measure of disdain for us reserves, but there wasn’t even a hint of that in Igloo’s attitude toward me and we were good friends,” Vezey wrote. “Igloo was a gentleman to the end and deferred to me in continuing the friendship with young Alice, and had we not gone back to sea shortly and into WW II with its stress, that evening might have ended in marriage for me. If my memory serves, Igloo already had a least casual romantic interests. After the war started, I tried to find out what his family connections were but to no avail.” 

On December 7, the Oklahoma was back at Pearl Harbor, still engaging in the patrols that Thompson noted in his earlier letter.  In fact, it had just come on the evening of December 6 from a patrol. An inspection was scheduled for the next morning and as a result, many of the normally closed water-tight doors and compartments were open as the crew rushed to make the ship “shipshape.” Most of the ammunition was also stored well below decks away from the guns. The opening of the hatches and watertight doors would later be considered part of the reason the battleship capsized so quickly. 

When the Japanese carrier based dive bombers and torpedo planes appeared in the sky over Pearl Harbor at 7:55 am on December 7, 1941, the Oklahoma was hit several times almost immediately, including at least four and possibly five torpedo hits. Within 15 minutes it had rolled over, trapping more than 400 crew members inside the ship. One was Ensign Irvin Thompson. 

“How did Igloo die?” Vezey wrote. “I don’t know for sure – I think his battle station was in the Main Battery gun control which would have put it in the bowels of the ship within the armored ‘box’ which protected the vitals of the ship. In that case he had little or no chance of escaping since the ship capsized in just a few minutes. Most of those stationed below could not escape and most of the 429 casualties occurred there.” 

Of the several hundred sailors trapped inside the Oklahoma, about 30 were rescued, some up to 30 hours later when holes were cut in the hull of the ship. One of the rescued sailors, Stephen Bower Young published “Trapped at Pearl Harbor, Escape from the Battleship Oklahoma” in 1991. 

Vezey remembered the events of December very clearly, even amid the chaos. 

 “I was in my bunk (two junior officers in a room) as was my roommate Ens. Frank Flaherty and (we) were trying to decide whether to go swimming before or after breakfast,” Vezey wrote in a December 24, 2008 email. “The General Alarm decided that and Frank left for his battle station in the #1  14 inch gun turret where he died and received the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving most of his crew at the cost of his own (life).” 

According to the US Navy’s Medal of Honor website, Flaherty received the commendation “For conspicuous devotion to duty and extraordinary courage and complete disregard of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. When it was seen that the U.S.S. Oklahoma was going to capsize and the order was given to abandon ship, Ens. Flaherty remained in a turret, holding a flashlight so the remainder of the turret crew could see to escape, thereby sacrificing his own life.” 

Vezey said that his battle station during the attack was at the anti-aircraft gun control about half way up the foremast. He didn’t have much time to prepare. 

“As the ship rolled I followed it around like burling a log and eventually swam to the USS Maryland,” he wrote. “In less than 15 minutes we went from a couple of carefree kids to dead or in the water. Truly a pivotal point in the lives of the survivors. People ask me if I was afraid during the attack and the answer is ‘no.’ The reaction was one of intense fury – a fury that boils up all over again as I write this and think of all the really great guys who were robbed, no, murdered and deprived of the privilege of living out their years.”  

Thompson's father was in Seattle with an unspecified illness, according to the Ketchikan Chronicle, when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred.  Mrs. Thompson and the rest of the family joined him there in early 1942. 

Merta Kiffer said, in 2011, that Mr. Thompson died shortly afterwards and the Thompson family never returned to Ketchikan.