A Witness to HISTORY
Days of Infamy Remembered From James Leavelle
Jim Leavelle is a veteran of the U . S . Navy and a survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII .
After suffering an injury aboard ship during a violent typhoon , Leavelle left the Navy and eventually took up a 25-year career as a police officer and detective with the Dallas Police Department .
During his time as a Dallas homicide detective , Leavelle was the first person to interrogate Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination of President John F . Kenney and the murder of Dallas Police Officer J . D . Tippit .
“ The man in the tan hat ,” he was escorting Oswald during a prison transfer when Jack Ruby infamously opened fire on Oswald , killing the suspected sniper .
Leavelle joined the American Veterans Center and World War II Veterans Committee ’ s Annual Veterans Conference last Veterans Day to share his incredible story as an eyewitness to two of the most infamous moments in American history . This is his story .
I
decided to join the Navy in 1940 , and was first assigned to U . S . S . Hammon , a destroyer that operated alongside an aircraft carrier moving in and out of Pearl Harbor . Before the war came , we ’ d go out to sea and the pilots would practice landing on the flat top of the aircraft carrier . Our role was to go out beside them and offer support in the event that one of the planes went overboard off one side of the ship . We had a small boat that hung off the side of the destroyer and it could drop in the water in an instant to pick up any men in the overboard plane .
We were proud of the fact that we never lost a pilot , although we did lose a plane a couple of times .
Some months later I was assigned to the U . S . S . Whitney , a destroyer tender which carried supplies for the destroyers at Pearl Harbor . It was sometime in May or June of 1941 that we went on full alert due to concerns that we would be going to war with Japan . Still , it was kind of like a “ boy who hollered wolf ” situation . We ’ d go on alert for a week or two , which would mean we couldn ’ t go ashore during that time , and then it would die down before we were put back on alert a week or two later . It just so happened that when Dec . 7 , 1941 rolled around , there wasn ’ t an alert in place .
When Pearl Harbor was attacked just before 8 a . m . that morning on December 7 , I was aboard our ship and we had just been served breakfast . The Japanese couldn ’ t have picked a better day to carry out the attack . We were paid twice monthly and December 6 happened to be our pay day ,
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