Death of Pearl Harbor Survivor Robert Addobati-- Part 2

He boarded the USS West Virginia to extract the burned and injured.  After that he stayed on the motor launch for two days and nights bringing the dead and wounded to the Solace from other stations.  He didn't talk about these experiences for many years but eventually began speaking about it at many local schools.

"I remembered reaching out and pulling them up.  You'd grab a sailor's arm, and the skin would pull off from being burned.  The water was covered with oil from the ships, and it was burning.  I did that for ours," he recalled.

Mr. Addoboti spent the rest of the war in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Guadalcanal.  The ship he was on was torpedoed in the Admiralty Islands near New Guinea and he was injured the following day and flown back to Pearl Harbor where he had a leg amputated.  He spent a year recovering at Mare Island Naval Hospital and after that went back to sea with the Military Sea Transportation Service.  He stayed there for seven years, participating in the Korean War where he helped evacuate the 1st Marine Division at Hungnam, North Korea.

After the war, he moved to Sacramento in 1966 where he was a founding member of the Sacramento Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivor's Association and returned to Pearl Harbor many times.

--GreGen