William J. Hoffman and LeRoy Weber at Pearl Harbor That Day-- Part 1

From the December 9, 2019, Wicked Local "Shore Lore:  Outer Cape to Pearl Harbor" by Don Wilding.

Two men from Eastham and Orleans, Massachusetts, (on Cape Cod) were lucky to survive that day.

William J. Hoffman, of  Eastham, was a civilian  in Naval service where he was the leading man  shipwright in the navy yard docks.  He received a citation after the battle from Secretary of the Navy Frank  Knox, reading in part that Hoffman "in on his own initiative, manning a rowboat and making repeated trips back and forth across the harbor under fire of bombers and machine guns bringing men from abandoned ships to  to the docks in the Navy Yard."

Prior to the attack, LeRoy Webster, from Minnesota at the time, but later a resident of Orleans,  was waiting on the deck of the USS Phoenix for a boat to carry him to the battleship USS West Virginia for church services.

"When the attack began, I was standing there waiting," said Weber. "If the boat had come to get me five minutes earlier, I would have been blown to bits."  The West Virginia was hard hit.

He saw the planes approaching, but, "I didn't realize it was the real thing until I got to my battle station.  I heard firing and bombs -- an then the West Virginia blew up."

--GreGen