BC Cook
LAST week we began the incredible story of Jorge Cristobal, a Chamorro from Guam who fought in the Pacific War. We pick up his account at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, as he stood on the deck of the battleship California, dodging bullets from attacking Japanese planes:
“Most of us stayed on deck because we took torpedoes and water started coming in below decks. We couldn’t go to our battle stations so I stayed up on the main deck and tried to take cover under the 16-inch guns. I felt sorry for the Marines because one of the torpedoes landed right underneath their area, and the armory was right there. That torpedo blew up and killed those Marines.
“The torpedoes hit and the ship started sinking, settling into the sand on the harbor bottom. All three of us Chamorros on the ship were right there and we didn’t know where to go. I only had on my shorts and t-shirt and we were running all over the place trying to fight the fire floating on the water and it was a mess.
“Nobody was in a clear state of mind at that moment. One of the officers told us to bring up all the potatoes from below. He said, ‘We don’t want to waste them!’ I said, ‘You’re thinking of potatoes at this time? What the heck is going on?’ I didn’t go down, but a couple of the mess attendants did, and those potatoes were in big wooden crates. Each weighed more than 120 pounds. You should have seen those guys coming up with those potatoes!
“I stayed aboard ship after the attack. After a while I got a message to report to the Regal. The officer said, ‘You are now going to be assigned to the staff of Vice Admiral Ghormley in New Zealand.’ We went from Pearl Harbor all the way down to New Zealand. We stopped at Samoa briefly and then went over to New Caledonia. They were very hospitable, gave us food and water to clean up.
“The Guadalcanal battle was really on the go at that time. The ships would sail, the Marines were invading, and the admiral was a very gentle guy, he wasn’t a brutal guy. After that, he started having heart trouble and then Admiral Halsey came and took over. Halsey was a pure warrior and I became his mess attendant. Halsey called me in when we moved into this house and he said, ‘Cristobal, from now on you are my housemate.’ And I was working for him at all times. I liked him because he respected me as a human being, but he was a very strict man. He kidded me a lot and I kidded him back.
“Some time later, Halsey said, ‘Cristobal, do you want to go to Guam?’ So, I smiled and said, ‘Yes, I probably would. That’s where my family is.’ He said, ‘I am going to have you transferred to the Third Marine Division as an interpreter.’ He told me the Marines were about to invade Guam and take it back from the Japanese. He knew I spoke Japanese and I could translate for the Chamorros also. He knew I was worried about my family, and he wanted to give me a chance to go home and find them.”
Having lived through the attack on Pearl Harbor and some of the most intense fighting of the war in the South Pacific, Jorge stood at the verge of returning home to Guam. What did he find there? We will continue with Jorge Cristobal’s incredible story next week.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for over 30 years. He is a director and historian at Sealark Exploration.
