Our Family at Pearl Harbor: Preston Van De Riet and the "Lucky Lou"

Did you know that we have a close Van De Riet cousin who was a stationed in Pearl Harbor during the attack? His name was Preston Van De Riet, and he was my grandma LaVonne's first cousin. Also first cousin to her brothers, WWII vets Harry, Jack, and Ray Van De Riet. 

 

Preston Van De Riet at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, sometime before the attack. 

Preston in uniform.

I visited with Preston's son Dennis before our family traveled to Hawaii last year. I asked him if he would teach my children about his Dad's experiences to help prepare them for our visit to the Pearl Harbor Memorial. He was kind enough to make a recording for us, and I would like to share some of the transcript here with you, with his permission. He also answered some additional questions for me, provided the pictures, pointed out the video links and supplemental media. Okay, okay, he pretty much is the guest blogger today. I'm just typing.  Thanks again, Dennis! I wish I would have known this connection when I was a teenager! Pull up a chair everyone, you'll enjoy this.

Preston Van De Riet as a child

Hello. My name is Dennis Van De Riet and my father, Preston Van De Riet, was a survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941. I would just like to give you a little background information on that. My father Preston was the son of Hiram Van De Riet who was the 6th of 8 children from Sarah and Herman Van De Riet. He was born in 1920 and joined the marines in February of 1941, about 8 or 9 months before the onset of WWII. As a marine, though, he was immediately stationed on a ship. He was trained in a couple of different areas but his main task was ammunition handler. And of course, almost every ship has gun turrets, so I’m sure he was heavily involved in running the guns there, especially during the attack.

USS Missouri firing her guns during Desert Storm, 1991
fifty years after Pearl Harbor. photo credit: wikipedia USS Missouri  

When you get to the USS Arizona look across the harbor. That is where the St. Louis was moored, along with a couple of other cruisers. The St. Louis [was his ship.] Now, you've gotta understand that my father, like any other WWII veteran, never, ever talked about his experiences in WWII. I mean never! Except for one time he did talk about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

the USS St. Louis, the "Lucky Lou"

He mentioned a couple of things, number one is that for his ship…the attack was on a Sunday, and most ships were at half-staffing because most of them were on liberty. They had liberty days on weekends. So, most of the ships were at half manpower. But... his ship for whatever reason was at full manpower, which allowed them to respond to the attack and get underway a lot faster than most of the other ships.

The number two thing is, that when they did get underway they were following the battleship Nevada. It was able to get away but was severely damaged in the initial attack. As it was getting underway, it was heading toward the mouth of the harbor. The captain of the Nevada realized he would not make it out, and if he did not make it out he would sink and block all access in and out of the harbor, so he made the decision to beach his ship off to the side. The St. Louis, being right behind it, was able to become the first ship out of Pearl Harbor during the attack. They did undergo a lot of attacks obviously from the air. The St. Louis was damaged but not severely damaged. They were also tracking down submarines–mini-submarines–at the time. But they did get out, made it to open seas, and made it eventually to San Francisco.

a Japanese midget submarine

Washington Post article about the "Lucky Lou" 

Here is a clip from a survivor--one of Preston's shipmates-- talking about his experience, titled "How the USS St. Louis fought back Dec. 7th."

After the St. Louis was repaired at Mare Island, near San Francisco, it turned to sea and headed back out to the Pacific. Then, of course, we became heavily involved in WWII. 

Preston Van De Riet's commendation

The St. Louis was involved in a number of battles, but probably the biggest battle it was involved in was in July of 1943, about a year and a half after Pearl Harbor. It was the Battle of Kolombangara which was in the Solomon Islands. It was about a 3 or 4 day naval battle, in which his ship, the St. Louis, was hit right square in the broadside by a torpedo, but the torpedo didn’t detonate, it was a dud! Very lucky for them. 

The very next day, they were hit on the bow with a torpedo, see picture.

The ship was severely damaged by that, however they were able to seal the water off and were able to sail back, actually, all the way from the Solomon Islands to Mare Island in San Francisco after that. During that battle, the St. Louis had a sister ship called the USS Helena, and that ship was torpedoed and sunk during this battle. But the St. Louis survived, they made it back to port, and it was repaired. Now that was a long repair, so my father was reassigned to another ship.

This time the ship was stationed out of the East coast, and he actually ended up in the Mediterranean Sea for the duration of the war, making it very unusual for somebody to fight in both the Pacific and in the European theater during WWII. But he ended up in North Africa and South Italy and that area of the Mediterranean, mostly transporting prisoners that were captured. The name of the ship he was on in that time was the USS General JR Brooke. 

I don’t have a lot of information because my father never ever talked about his combat time during WWII. I know that just from pictures I’ve been able to glean off the internet and information off the internet. It was a pretty taxing time to be sure. But anyway, he survived, he made it through, obviously or I wouldn’t be here.

Another unusual thing about his career, he joined as a marine but he spent his entire career on a ship, either the St. Louis or the Brooke, and even more unusual than that is that in my career in the service I spent four years in the navy and I never went on a ship. I spent all my time on land, a unique contrast.

I asked Dennis what happened to his Dad after the war--what was the "rest of the story?" 

[Preston] married my mother in 1944, before the war ended. They met in San Francisco while his ship was being repaired. Since my mother was Jewish, my dad converted to Judaism before they got married. They had three children while they lived in San Francisco.They lived in SF until 1956 when they moved to San Mateo (18 miles south of San Francisco). He was involved in Cub/Boy Scouts and Little League and also was a CB radio enthusiast. But most of all he liked camping, boating and fishing. We belonged to a boat club in San Mateo and we all learned to water ski.

Every year we had our vacation at Lake Shasta, camping in tents with the boat near by. Fishing every day (even caught a fish every now and again) and just enjoying the great outdoors. He retired form a company that printed magazines (most notably "TV Guide") in the mid 1970s and moved permanently my mother to Lake Shasta until his death in 1981.

Dennis said that he didn't have his Dad's medals for a picture here, but here is a list of the medals he was awarded. 

American Campaign Medal

Europe-Africa-Middle East Campaign Medal

Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal

Navy China Service Medal

Philippine Liberation Medal

WWII Victory Medal

Combat Action Ribbon

Philippine Presidential Unit Citation

Thank you Dennis, to both you and your father for your service to our country! I loved learning this story.