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Title: The West Loch Story: Hawaii's Second Greatest Disaster in Terms of Casualties by William L.C. Johnson ISBN: 0-9616964-0-0 Publisher: Westloch Pubns Pub. Date: July, 1986 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $10.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Very moving personal history
Comment: On May 21, 1944, a series of explosions and fires aboard several Navy ships in Pearl Harbor led to the deaths of 163 men, with nearly 400 wounded, and six ships destroyed. For operational reasons, the Navy reported this as a 'small mishap,' and, amidst the larger war, the incident was largely forgotten.

Nearly 40 years later, William L.C. Johnson, a survivor of the explosions, asked another Navy man a by-the-way question about the event. One thing led to another, as they say, and within a few years, Johnson had collected dozens of first-hand accounts and photographs from eyewitnesses of the disaster. Out of those accounts comes this book.

William Johnson is no David McCullough, and this book will never be considered for a Pulitzer. It's not highly polished history -- it doesn't even, for example, get to the bottom of what really triggered the explosions in the first place. What this book is, however, is a very personal, and moving, labor of love, both for the author himself and for the many other men whose stories are told here.

In fact, the second half of the book is made up entirely of personal accounts from Marines, Army soldiers, and Navy and Coast Guard men who were there that day. Johnson also includes records of the Navy Board of Inquiry on the disaster, and the logs of several of the ships involved. These latter, especially, help illustrate the scope of the event, while the personal accounts demonstrate the chaos on the scene.

The West Loch disaster was, in the grand scheme of the war in the Pacific, a relatively minor event. It didn't even delay 'Operation Forager,' the invasion of Saipan for which the ships and men were being readied. But it wasn't minor for the men who experienced it, or for the families and friends of those who died. As the era, and the men who lived it, fade from view, this small book helps remember the men who gave their lives in action in May 1944.