![]() ![]() ![]() Holmquist joined the Navy after the Pearl Harbor attack and became one of the submariners who carried American resistance all the way to Japan's doorstep. military forces on the offensive were Navy submarines. Wake Island, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore all fell in just over two months.ĭue to the "Germany First" strategy agreed to by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, more help would come slowly. In the opening year of World War II, America was on the defensive, if not retreat, throughout the Pacific theater.įollowing the Japanese attack on the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, British and American forces in the Pacific were reeling. "You'd try to get the headphones off before the charge went off, but sometimes you couldn't get them off," Holmquist said as he pointed to his pair of hearing aids. Operators then knew what was coming next. The click was the first sonar sound in the ignition sequence of the depth charge. "I operated all the sonar stuff and when we were being depth-charged, you'd hear a click." "The destroyers tracking us and dropping depth charges were the worst," the former submarine radio operator said. Holmquist still vividly recalls the "click" made by Japanese depth charges before they exploded. Though 70 years have clouded some memories, Jacksonville's Robert W. ![]()
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