HERBERT S. LOUDEN
USS SOLACE
By Martin C. Hoopes
I was a pharmacist 3rd class, in Medical Ward 3 on the Naval Hospital Ship Solace, which was at the east end of Ford Island near the end of battleship row. I was aware of the attack when the bombings caused concussions that rocked the ship. Looking out of the porthole I could see smoke rising from the battleship row and other ships in the harbor. I was immediately assigned to a special stretcher detail for the picking up of the many wounded in the waters around the burning ships. We went out on liberty launches, collecting many wounded men, wrapping them in beautiful yellow blankets, which were soon ruined by blood and oily water. We worked all morning and loaded the hospital ship with about 400 men; some of the men were taken to the Naval Hospital ashore.
After this detail was completed I was ordered to take care of one boy in particular that I stayed with eight days and nights and never left him. His name was James T. Lackey from Beeville, Texas. He had been a seaman first class aboard the USS Curtis which received the only Kamikaze bombing plane. It smashed into the Curtis and blew up the powder room where this young man was passing ammunition. He was burnt all over his body except from the left knee to the left hip with 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th degree burns. He was unconscious at the time he came aboard with a metal shipping tag on his big toe telling the medication he had been given. Because of his condition he had been given one half gram of morphine soleplate and a half hour later another one half gram of morphine soleplate, which was eight times the normal dosage.
When the medical team of doctors came through the ship checking various patients they advised me to make him as comfortable as possible realizing that not all of the patients would make it. The following day a nurse, Agnes Shure, and a doctor whose name I believe was Carlton came by to check on the patient. The patient said “I hope I can be as good a man as my daddy” and he went into unconsciousness again. The doctor turned to me and said “he has a will to live and whether he lives or dies depends on the care you give him”. For eight days and nights I devoted most of my time. Being a young Christian Man of 24 I believe in prayer and prayed many times for his recovery, when he finally came to, he said he did not believe in prayer or God and thought he was an atheist.
I forced fluids on him and had a heat cradle over the top of him which had 32 lights to help control his temperature. To begin with he came aboard with tannic acid jelly all over his body and this tannic acid jelly causes an eschar or scab under which infection grows. So everything, all of his skins had turned black had to be removed. So I really skinned the man alive in order to save his life. I had to remove that to cleanse his proud flesh and do pin grafting. That is where you stick a pin through some of his skin, raise it up and cut it off with a scalpel and put it on top of the proud flesh. This would start growing and spread. This grew new skin all over the young man. Some of the intravenous injections or fluid, feeding and medications had to be done through the souls of his feet because of the eschar over his arms and other parts of his body. It was hard to find blood vessels. I have to take my hat of to him going through all those necessary painful procedures. Also we had to remove shrapnel out of his back as we found holes under scabs we did not know existed. Also many of the heavily burned patients had to have their bodies submerged in salt water to help cleanse and kill bacteria, which was a very painful process. Remember in those days we did not have all the modern drugs now available to treat burn patients. I had a little Bible the chaplain had given me and put it by his bunk where he could read it or not as he liked. He left the ship March 15th, the following year, which was the longest period of time that any patient, was on board the ship. He was medically discharged and went back to Texas. I did not realize at that time I had influenced his life a whole lot. A year and a half after I was out of the service and I received a letter from him thanking me for saving his life and introducing him to the Savior, to God.
I had hoped to see him at the 50th PHSA Convention in Hawaii but it never happened. I diid meet a man by the name of Baxter, he said ““I see you are from the hospital ship Solace”. He said “he was from the USS Curtis and when the bombs hit his ship 79 men were injured and 19 killed”. I told him about one of them that were injured and I had taken care of him on the Solace. I told him about James Lackey and he said “he would try and find him for me as he had kept in contact with some of the crew members”. I received a letter from Baxter saying James Lackey had died in 1959. Many of the men that were wounded with burns much less than James Lackey did not survive that day of infamy. As a Christian I am a firm believer-and so was James Lackey in later life-that God did have something to do with giving him another 18 years to live.
In closing I might add another good thing that came my way, as well as for one million men of our Armed Forces that probably would be killed if we had to invade Japan. I was one of the many corpsman assigned to the Marine Corps units which would make the initial landing in Japan. We was sent to a Marine Training Camp where we was Trained in all the hand to hand rigorous training that Marines had to go through and as well issued weapons to protect ourselves so we could accomplish what we were trained to do-use our training and medical skills to save our servicemen. In earlier Island battles with the Japanese-they tried to kill as many as they could identified with the corpsman insignia-necessitating the removal of the insignias. Needless to say if when we invaded Japan corpsman would have been even a greater target. Fortunately for both sides this landing did not happen! The Emperor agreed to the surrender terms in spite of the fact that many of the higher Military command in JAPAN wanted to continue war on Japanese soil and if necessary go out in a blaze of glory