Transcription
Have you ever wondered why there is a second ship leaking oil at Pearl Harbor, not the Arizona? Most people know about the Arizona, the black tears, the rainbow sheen on the water, the oil that has been rising to the surface every single day since 1941.
But there is another ship down there, sitting on the bottom of the same harbor, just on the other side of Ford Island. Almost nobody talks about it. Most visitors to Pearl Harbor never see it. And the wreck is also still leaking oil right now today, and nobody knows exactly how much is left inside. That ship is the USS Utah.
But before I continue, I am genuinely curious where you are watching this from. And has anyone here been to Pearl Harbor or have a connection to any of these ships?
The USS Utah has been sitting on the floor of Pearl Harbor since the morning of December the 7th, 1941. 54 men are still inside. The Navy and the National Park Service have admitted on record that they do not know how much oil is left inside the hole or how much is leaking out every single day. The ship that almost nobody talks about is slowly bleeding into one of America's most famous harbors, and there is no plan to stop it.
Here is why. The Utah was not supposed to be at Pearl Harbor that morning, not as a target anyway. By December 1941, the Utah was not even a fighting ship anymore. The Utah had been a battleship once, commissioned back in 1911, was one of the most powerful vessels in the US Navy. But after the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 set limits on warship numbers, the Navy stripped out her guns and converted the Utah into a target ship. Aircraft used the wreck for bombing practice. Her decks were covered with heavy wooden timbers to absorb the impact of training bombs. The Utah was redesignated AG-16. She was, for all practical purposes, a floating target range.
The Japanese knew this. Before the attack, Japanese military planners had specifically identified the Utah and issued a direct order to their pilots, "Do not waste torpedoes on the Utah. She's not a warship. She has no military value. Leave her alone." That order was ignored.
On the morning of December the 7th, 16 Japanese torpedo bombers came in low over the west side of Ford Island looking for American aircraft carriers. The carriers were not there. In the confusion of the attack, six of those pilots saw the Utah and went for her anyway. Two torpedoes hit the port side in quick succession. The Utah began listing immediately. At 8:01 in the morning, the wreck was already rolling. By 8:12, the Utah had capsized completely. The entire thing was over in 11 minutes. 519 men got off. 58 did not.
Chief Water Tender Peter Tomich stayed below decks during the capsize to make sure his engineering crew could escape and to secure the boilers. Knowing the ship was rolling over on top of him, Tomich was never seen again. Tomich was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. His body remains inside the wreck to this day.
Shortly after the capsized hull settled, the ship's senior officer, Commander Solomon Isquith, inside the hull, men were still alive trapped in the darkness inside an upturned ship with water rising around them. Isquith found volunteers, sourced a cutting torch from a nearby damaged cruiser, and cut through the hull while Japanese planes were still strafing the harbor. They pulled four men out alive. They could not reach the others. Only four of the 58 dead were ever recovered. The remaining 54 men were left where they were. The wreck was their grave and that is how it has stayed.
There is one more detail about what is entombed inside the Utah. In the year 2000, a woman named Mary Creak came forward with a story she had kept to herself for nearly 60 years. Her father, Chief Yeoman Albert Wagner, had served aboard the Utah. In 1937, Mary's twin sister Nancy had died at birth. Wagner had the infant cremated and placed the small urn in his locker aboard the ship intending to scatter the ashes at sea. He never got the chance. Wagner survived the attack but he could not reach his locker before the ship went over. The ashes of a baby girl have been inside the Utah ever since December the 7th, 1941.
After the attack, the Navy made a partial attempt to salvage the Utah. From 1943 into 1944, using the same parbuckling technique that had successfully righted the USS Oklahoma, they attached 17 winches to the hole and tried to rotate it upright. The wreck did not grip the harbor bottom the way the Oklahoma had. Instead of rotating back to upright, the Utah slid sideways toward Ford Island. The salvage operation was abandoned. The wreck was left at a 38 degree tilt, partially on her side, where she remains today.
Unlike the battleships on the east side of Ford Island, the Utah had no military value worth restoring. The Utah was formally decommissioned in September 1944 and struck from the naval vessel register in November of the same year. The Navy decided to leave her where she was and the oil stayed with her.
Here is what makes the Utah situation different from the Arizona. The Arizona became the centerpiece of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. More than 900 men are entombed inside the Arizona. The white memorial building was constructed directly above the wreck in 1962, and now draws over 2 million visitors every year. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study the Arizona's oil regularly. The National Park Service monitors how much oil leaks per day, how much remains, and how long it might continue.
The Utah sits on the other side of Ford Island. The small memorial erected near the wreck in 1972 is only reachable via a restricted military base. Most civilians have to book a guided bus tour just to get there. Most people who spend a day at Pearl Harbor never see it. And because so much less attention has been paid to the Utah, the monitoring has been far less thorough. The National Park Service and the US Navy have both acknowledged on the record that they do not know how much oil is co-leaking from the Utah each day. They do not know how much remains inside the hole. One estimate puts the Utah's original fuel load roughly a third of the Arizona's, which carried 1 and 1/2 million gallons. But the exact figures are not publicly known. What is known is that the oil is still there, and it is still leaking.
The reasons for leaving it alone are the same ones that apply to the Arizona, compounded by the fact that the hole is in worse structural shape. The wreck has been partially on its side for more than 80 years. The metal has been corroding in salt water since 1941. Any attempt to cut into the hole to remove the oil risks rupturing the tanks entirely, turning a slow drip into a catastrophic release of heavy fuel oil directly into Pearl Harbor. And this wreck, like the Arizona, is a designated war grave. 54 men are inside. Peter Tomich is inside. The ashes of a baby named Nancy are inside.
The Navy's position is clear. You do not disturb the dead to clean up the oil. The oil stays. So, the Utah sits on the bottom of Pearl Harbor at a tilt on the quiet side of Ford Island, away from the main memorial, and away from the 2 million annual visitors. It is still slowly leaking oil that nobody is measuring into a harbor most of those visitors will look at from the Arizona memorial and never think twice about.
The Utah was not supposed to be sunk on December 7th, 1941. The Japanese commanders had specifically ordered their pilots to leave her alone. She had no military value. Attacking the Utah was, by the Japanese military's own assessment, a waste. But, the oil loaded into the Utah before the attack is still there. It is still leaking. And unlike the Arizona, which has an entire scientific program dedicated to understanding it, nobody can tell you exactly how much is left or how long it will continue. It's been doing that for over 80 years, and the honest answer is that nobody knows when it will stop.
If you found this video interesting, let me know in the comments, and I will keep making these for more forgotten ships. Subscribe so you do not miss the next one.