Pearl Harbor survivor recalls attack Southwest Harbor man served on Taney, one of the first ships to return fire

BALTIMORE – When the sun rose Dec. 7, 1941, above Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Coast Guard cutter Taney was docked on Pier 6.

At 7:55 a.m., a siren went off. Nothing unusual about that – the crew had been holding a lot of drills lately. But when the men arrived at their battle stations, a squadron of Japanese planes flew over. This time, it was for real.

The 327-foot Taney was one of the first vessels to return fire, doing so in less than four minutes. Today, it is the last Pearl Harbor warship afloat after serving for half a century and being decommissioned in 1986.

“They don’t build ships like that anymore,” said Francis C. Soares, a gun captain on board during the attack that brought the United States into World War II.

Soares, 80, who lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine, remembers the explosions, the fires and billowing smoke that made it so hard to see, and the “shooting, shooting, shooting.”

At 11:58 a.m., a Japanese plane flew directly at the Taney, not expecting it to fire back, Soares said. But it did, putting up a thick wall of ammunition.

“We surprised the heck out of him and he turned around,” Soares said.

On Sunday, Soares was planning to return to the cutter to dedicate an onboard exhibit showcasing the ship’s role during the attack. Soares, who served on the Taney for almost three years, is one of 22 of the 145 crewman still alive.

He was expected to be the only one dedicating the exhibit.

“We’re looking at one of our last chances to have the people who were there tell their story,” said a Coast Guard spokesman, Ensign Steve Youde.

The ship was named after Maryland native Roger B. Taney, a chief justice of the United States in the 19th century. It was decommissioned in 1986 and donated to the city of Baltimore.

A make-work project of the Great Depression, the Taney was built in Philadelphia in 1936. It was part of a series of ships named for secretaries of the treasury that were among the “biggest and most expensive and best ships the Coast Guard ever made,” said John Kellett, director of the Baltimore Maritime Museum, which now runs the ship.

Kellett hopes the release of movie “Pearl Harbor” and the exhibit will drum up interest in preserving the Taney, which he said needs about $750,000 in work.

“We’re of the mind that at least one ship should remain that saw action that day,” he said.

The ship is a Coast Guard legend, having undergone several conversions over its 50 years of service.

One of the Taney’s first tours of duty was in the South Pacific, where it helped search for Amelia Earhart in 1937. After Pearl Harbor, it shot down five planes while serving at Okinawa and then patrolled the seas during the Vietnam War.

Later, the Taney handled fisheries, weather and drug interdiction duties – including a record seizure of 160 tons of marijuana off Virginia in 1985.

“She really has done anything that the Coast Guard does,” Youde said.

And its mission is not complete. As a museum, it educates the public about the Coast Guard, helping to dispel the common notion that this branch of the armed forces never sees combat.

That’s nothing new to Soares, but he hopes public perception will change.

“The Navy’s always told their story, the Coast Guard’s never gotten theirs out,” said Soares, who settled in Southwest Harbor after 30 years in the Coast Guard. “A lot of people don’t realize the Coast Guard was [in World War II].”