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The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
417: Nikki Stratton—All the Gallant Men
01:30:49
Nikki Stratton is the granddaughter of Pearl Harbor survivor Donald Stratton. Donald was a sailor aboard the ill-fated USS Arizona on December 7, 1941, and wrote the book to recount the event. Nikki is the sponsor of the soon-to-be-commissioned...
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- [00:04]
Mike Rowe
Hey, guys, me again with another episode of the Way I Heard It. This one is called all the Gallant Men with Nicky Stratton. Chuck, you've done it again. You found a guest that I absolutely love with a story that absolutely needs to be shared.
- [00:20]
Chuck
Good story, Good story.
- [00:21]
Mike Rowe
I've reached out to our audience and I didn't want to share this with you. I was going to save it for Christmas, but we've decided to keep you on for another month.
- [00:29]
Chuck
Oh, wow. This is good news.
- [00:32]
Mike Rowe
It is good news. December 7th is upon us. And Nikki Stratton is a woman who is the sponsor of the new USS Arizona, or SSN Arizona.
- [00:47]
Chuck
That is correct.
- [00:48]
Mike Rowe
Which stands for Submersible Ship Nuclear. Yes. Yeah, we'll sort of fumble through that in the conversation you're about to hear. But of course, the USS Arizona famously sunk in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I don't call it a battle. Some people chided me for that, historically. But I think it was more of an attack than a battle.
- [01:13]
Chuck
It was a surprise attack. A dirty, stinking, you know, kicked you in the. You know what?
- [01:20]
Mike Rowe
Go ahead, say it. Say it. It was man. What happened in Pearl harbor on the 7th of December, 1941 is infuriating. And I was so struck in reading this book by Nicky's grandfather, Donald Stratton, all the Gallant Men. I was struck to learn some things, to relearn some things in a way that somehow made me angry. Right? It made me angry. Just the pure horror of this attack and the way that I'm afraid we forget, you know, it's always, never forget. Oh, we'll never forget this. But we do, man, because we can't live with that level of jaggedness and that kind of constant outrage. It's not good for us. But we can't forget, man. And this book will remind a whole new generation of what happened that day through the eyes of a man who survived against odds. Guys, I am telling you, it's a miracle he lived. It's a miracle he lived to 96, I believe.
- [02:27]
Chuck
Yes.
- [02:28]
Mike Rowe
This book is a miracle. And the fact that his granddaughter is now the sponsor of the ship that he occupied 80 some years ago, it really is a total circle. And I just think you're going to like this woman.
- [02:43]
Chuck
She is a great spokesperson for the event. She is the reason that people will never forget Pearl harbor because she's carrying her grandfather's story on. And as long as the SSN Arizona, when it finally is christened and launched.
- [03:02]
Mike Rowe
2027, I think there should be. Yeah.
- [03:04]
Chuck
When it should be done. As long as that's around. It's, you know, the story is going to live on. Hopefully it's going to live on forever. But she is going to help make that happen. It's personal to her. She sat on this man's knee and listened to him tell stories about what happened on that ship.
- [03:20]
Mike Rowe
But not the whole story. Yeah, yeah. You know, this is the thing about guys like Stratton and so many of the greatest generation. They just, they hide it under a bushel and they do it, I think in some cases just for self preservation and for some cases out of genuine modesty and just a desire to move on from that hellscape. But you just have to really understand on a human, individual, micro level, World War II was macro. It was the whole world.
- [03:54]
Chuck
Right?
- [03:54]
Mike Rowe
Right. What happened at Pearl was Microsoft. And what happened to Donald Stratton?
- [03:59]
Chuck
Super micro.
- [04:00]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. It's a story that you need to hear. The book is called all the Gallant Men and we'll talk about why as we get into it, but I can't recommend it enough. It's terrific. And so is the woman you're about to meet, Nicki Stratton. Stand by for her right after this. Do, do, do, do do do do, do, do do. We've all heard the pop culture definition of insanity, right? The business of doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Take the business of hiring, for instance. For decades, companies large and small have been advertising for talent in the same exact way with the expectation that this time it'll work. But it doesn't. And still many of these same companies keep doing the same thing over and over instead of posting a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com row well, that's insane, because ZipRecruiter really is the smartest way to hire. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter.com row get a quality candidate within the first day. That's what I would call insanely effective. Likewise, you can use ZipRecruiter's pre written invite to apply message to personally reach out to your favorite candidates and encourage them to apply sooner. That gives you a leg up on the competition, which strikes me as as a crazy smart thing to do. Stop beating your head against the wall. Try something that actually works. Post a job for free at ziprecruiter.com row that's ziprecruiter.com roe the smartest way to hire. This is so cool. First of all, you came bearing gifts.
- [05:47]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, I did.
- [05:48]
Mike Rowe
And I haven't looked in the bag yet. I'm going to look now because of, first of all, very patriotic bunting tissue paper. I love that.
- [05:59]
Nikki Stratton
Thank you very much. So that's actually a crew hat. So that's the same hat that the crew wears on their daily rounds and duties. So you are official member of the USS Arizona crew.
- [06:08]
Mike Rowe
One size fits most. I see.
- [06:10]
Nikki Stratton
I hope so.
- [06:11]
Mike Rowe
What a relief that is because my head is larger than the average. These out here. What do we have here? A shirt?
- [06:19]
Nikki Stratton
Yes. So that was actually designed by the crew as well. So the Arizona is kind of. They want it to be kind of the ghost of the ocean because of the new VPN module, which I'm sure we're going to talk about later, But VPM module. VPM module.
- [06:31]
Mike Rowe
What's that stand for?
- [06:32]
Nikki Stratton
Virginia Payload Module.
- [06:33]
Mike Rowe
I have so many questions for you. All right, and then we have this.
- [06:37]
Nikki Stratton
So that's a challenge coin. That's actually my personal sponsor challenge coin. And so it's actually in the shape of Arizona. On the First Forces side, you have the original Battleship Arizona as she was December 6, 1941. And then you have the Tree of Life, which is actually on the USS Arizona Memorial. And then when you flip it on the other side, you have the future submarine. So you have past and future.
- [06:59]
Chuck
You're holding it sideways, by the way.
- [07:01]
Mike Rowe
I got a lot going on, dude. Okay. I got hats, I got shirts. I have this thing in my other hand.
- [07:05]
Nikki Stratton
So that is the USS Arizona coin for Electric Boat. They're the ones that are actively building the submarine at the moment.
- [07:11]
Mike Rowe
Oh, my God. That's amazing. And this.
- [07:13]
Nikki Stratton
That is the very first challenge coin from the USS Arizona. It is. They're collector's items. I think they've only made like 50 or 100 of them, so only a handful full of people actually will get those.
- [07:25]
Mike Rowe
All right, that's everything.
- [07:25]
Nikki Stratton
I think there should be a patch in there, too, but it might be buried somewhere deep in there.
- [07:31]
Chuck
It's rectangular.
- [07:37]
Nikki Stratton
Hopefully there's a patch in there.
- [07:41]
Mike Rowe
I don't know.
- [07:42]
Unknown
I don't know.
- [07:42]
Mike Rowe
I got a shirt.
- [07:43]
Nikki Stratton
Ah, it was in your lap. So that's a crew patch. They actually wear those on the uniforms. It denotes that they are part of SSN803, which is obviously the name of USS Arizona. They actually did colorized versions of those, but I figured the military patches were.
- [07:58]
Mike Rowe
I can't see SNN and see anything other than Social Security number.
- [08:02]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah, it's a hard one to get over.
- [08:03]
Mike Rowe
What's the official acronym Stand for sailing ship.
- [08:08]
Nikki Stratton
Oh, gosh, you're putting me on the. Yes. Subsurface Navy, I believe.
- [08:13]
Mike Rowe
Oh. So this is for the new Arizona.
- [08:15]
Nikki Stratton
Correct.
- [08:15]
Mike Rowe
Okay, I got it. And this is your new husband, Mike.
- [08:18]
Nikki Stratton
This is my new husband, Mike. Yes.
- [08:19]
Mike Rowe
Reclining and resplendent in a davenport that's not my own. When I heard that you guys were willing to fly in from Denver to talk about your pops, I was like, well, let's please make that happen. So, first and foremost, thank you for coming and thank you for the lovely gifts.
- [08:35]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, you bet. Thank you for having me and appreciating that. You know, originally we wanted to do this in December, but I was gonn be in Hawaii in December, so I appreciate the flexibility.
- [08:43]
Mike Rowe
All right. Having said all of that, your pop, my business, such as it is, my career, such as it is, happened because of my granddad, who was a giant inspiration in my life. And I am reading Donald Stratton's book, your grandfather, all the Gallant Men. As you can see, I'm probably 4/5 of the way through. And I started making marks, Nikki, about passages I might want to read aloud, ask you about specifically, and realize that the entire thing was marked up. That's not going to happen. But there are so many things in this book that absolutely took my breath away. And the crazy thing about it is, while I learned a lot of things I didn't know, the things I read about that I did know landed with such a wallop. I know the Arizona. I know what happened to it. I've been there. I've looked at it. I had all that. But reading about it from your grandfather's perspective, it's breathtaking. And I can't even imagine how proud you must be not only of your new position vis a vis your relationship to him, but just by sheer nature of the DNA you were so fortunate to inherit.
- [09:55]
Nikki Stratton
I'm so grateful. I mean, he has been my hero since I was very little. And it was one of those things where when you looked at him, you never knew that he was. Had survived such a catastrophic event in history, was a part of such an incredible moment, inflection point in our history. I mean, you could see the burns on his hands, but he acted just like everybody else. He still had a great sense of humor. And, you know, he never really wore anything that kind of indicated that he was a Pearl harbor survivor, let alone a USS Arizona survivor.
- [10:23]
Mike Rowe
There was another terrific book that this reminded me of a little bit around that point. Exactly. It was called Unbroken.
- [10:33]
Nikki Stratton
Great movie, too.
- [10:34]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. Lamperini, was it Lamperini?
- [10:36]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. Escaped from a POW camp.
- [10:38]
Mike Rowe
The fact that he did all that and survived is enough. But the fact that it didn't break him, that it made him even, it made all the good things about him even better. You know, that's true.
- [10:50]
Nikki Stratton
You have to remember he was an 18 year old kid. He had just come out of the Depression. I mean, the Depression era forged that generation into just, you know, steal. I mean, there was just no way of breaking them because of the Depression. And so he was an 18 year old kid, he was burned over 65% of his body. He basically, the Navy said, thank you for your service, you're done. And then he was like, I'm not ready to let go yet. And he re enlisted and went right back into war and finished out World War II after being burned as badly as he was.
- [11:15]
Mike Rowe
Steel sharpens steel.
- [11:16]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, it does.
- [11:17]
Mike Rowe
So he's there at the beginning and he was really there at the end off Okinawa, right?
- [11:22]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, he was. He started the war and finished the war.
- [11:24]
Mike Rowe
Okay, so I hate to ask you this because I know you've been over it a thousand times, but so our listeners understand, who was your pop? Was it Red Cloud?
- [11:34]
Nikki Stratton
Red Cloud, Nebraska, Right? Yes.
- [11:37]
Mike Rowe
I mean, dust bowl stuff.
- [11:38]
Nikki Stratton
100% dust bowl, yeah.
- [11:40]
Mike Rowe
All right, so how did he grow up? How did he get into the service? And what in the world did he see on the 7th of December?
- [11:48]
Nikki Stratton
That last question is very loaded, but we'll start at the beginning. My grandfather was born in Red Cloud, Nebraska. It was a town of maybe 100 people, 200 people. It's, you know, it's slightly bigger today. I think they're over a thousand, but, you know, not really a ton bigger. He was born in a one bedroom, two bedroom farmhouse. He shared a bedroom with his brother and sister, grew up on a farm. Working outside really wasn't a lot to be had. And you know, when he was, oh gosh, I want to say 13 or so, the Great Depression started. And so that started putting everybody out of work. There was food shortages, there was work shortages, everything.
- [12:23]
Mike Rowe
And again, this is a thing that everybody listening has heard of.
- [12:27]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [12:27]
Mike Rowe
And it's a thing that everybody listening thinks they have some sort of intellectual understanding of. But you can't, you can't.
- [12:35]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. Then you have this dust bowl that happened and basically, you know, dust storms covered, I think, what was it, 40, 45% of Middle America? Basically, crops became pulp overnight. There was crops that were completely covered in dust where you couldn't even see over the top of them. And so, I mean, that's America's what little food that had during the Depression wiped out every other food sources. And I think just kind of in the Nebraska area alone, I believe that the dust storms actually killed around 7,000 people due to starvation because there just, there wasn't enough food to go around.
- [13:08]
Mike Rowe
And so worth pointing out too that this is not a time where, Unlike today, what one and a half percent of the country feeds 330 million people, right? Back then there was a lot more farmland, A lot more farmland and there were a lot more people who really lived specifically on the food. They grow, grew. And so the whole ecosystem was just so much more intense and so much more personal. So yeah, this was not a thing that happened to other people.
- [13:34]
Nikki Stratton
It was the 1930s, there was no fast food. I mean, the Great Depression just wiped out everything. So if you did manage to go into a grocery store, you'd be lucky if they had basic needs like flour. You know, my grandfather remembers surviving on a piece of bread with butter and maybe a glass of milk from their cow a day. That's one meal a day that they survived off of. And this was still while trying to work the fields on what area that they could that hadn't been affected by the dust storms. But you also have to remember when those dust storms came in, you know, there was no protection, they didn't have masks, they didn't, there was no way to kind of get around it. And so, you know, dust got in the house, it got under plates, it got in the food. But mostly it got into the immune system. My grandfather's sister had a compromised immune system because she was breathing in the dust. And I mean she never, her lungs never really functioned right after that.
- [14:24]
Mike Rowe
Oh God. It's just, it's so insidious. It's your eyes, your nose, your ears, it just gets in everywhere.
- [14:32]
Nikki Stratton
It's kind of like rolling around in a thing of dirt and you know, seeing what you breathe in and then your eyes get all crusty and gross.
- [14:38]
Mike Rowe
It just must be, you know, again I'm saying something kind of obvious, but to be a grown up and suddenly be confronted with this incredible change of circumstance, it's probably more terrifying in some ways than being a 13 year old kid or younger and not having too much, right? I mean, you haven't been around long enough to be sufficiently freaked out by the weirdness of it. But still you have to adapt.
- [15:02]
Nikki Stratton
You absolutely do have to adapt. And you also have to remember, at least in the rural Ports of America. Most houses didn't have electricity. So my grandfather's farmhouse did not have electricity and it didn't have indoor plumbing. And so as these dust storms were raging and as, you know, things were going on, they still had to go outside to go to the bathroom. And then when they came back in, there was no light. So they basically just kind of had to feel around where they were. They probably had some small lanterns, but no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no toilet paper. I mean, toilet paper was a luxury at that point. And so I would say 90% of homes at that point had no toilet paper. So they used to use pages of this catalog.
- [15:41]
Mike Rowe
Yeah, I'd always heard it. But your pop actually writes in some detail about it.
- [15:45]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, he does. Yes, he does.
- [15:47]
Mike Rowe
Wow. And yet for all of that hardship, one of the first things that strikes me in the book is how painful it was to leave home, to leave all that dust, to leave what, you know, and basically muster out. Right.
- [16:02]
Nikki Stratton
Well, I mean, at that point, as the Great Depression had finally had finished its course in a town of less than 500 people, not a ton of jobs for 16, 17, 18 year old kid. And so he ended up was running mail to and from the local theater and then wandered in and saw some of the colorized posters that are kind of iconic of World War II of a big old battleship. And so he walked into the Navy office and got some information and took it back home to mom and dad and said, well, it's a job. I would get paid $20 a month, which if you think about that today, how many people have $20 in their pocket right now and we'll spend that on a coffee or whatever, $20 a month for him. And a lot of those guys at that time would send, I would say 80 to 90% of that money back home, you know, because they needed it more than they did. Obviously the military took care of food, lodging and all of that. So they sent most of that home, took that back to my great grandmother and said, this is a chance for me. I want to explore the world. I want to see the world outside of Red Cloud. And, you know, he used to read all of the time and one of his favorite books was 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. And so he wanted to be like Captain Nemo. Little did we know later in his life, he was very much like Captain Nemo. But we'll go through that a little bit later. But he's like, this is something I really want to do. And my great grandfather was in World War I. He was in the trenches and actually had some damage to his lungs. And obviously, as we know it today, ptsd. And so my grandmother was very hesitant to allow my grandfather to go, just because she knows how my great grandfather was with his nightmares and his lungs and all of that.
- [17:34]
Mike Rowe
But back when they called it shell shock.
- [17:36]
Nikki Stratton
Shell shock, exactly. But, you know, my grandfather was very persistent. He was a very stubborn man. I think our entire family has inherited that trait of being stubborn. And so she said, okay. She said, you can go enlist. And so he enlisted. And, you know, as he was walking out the bus to catch the bus, she sent him off with a pocket Bible. It was, I believe, the New Testament pocket Bible, because she was very religious. And gave him a hug and said, you know, there's a couple of snacks for the road. And then my great grandfather said, basically, like, keep your nose out of trouble and stay out of the brothels. That was his advice to my grandfather to make sure that he kept his nose clean.
- [18:17]
Mike Rowe
You could have condensed it and just gone with keep your nose out of the brothels.
- [18:20]
Chuck
Yeah, he was keeping more than his nose clean.
- [18:22]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. Stay mellow first. Right. So what was the state of recruitment like prior to the war? Were they leaning on people to encouraging people to enlist?
- [18:37]
Nikki Stratton
Not really. They really weren't leaning on it just because they, at the time, the Americans wanted to stay out of the conflict, both on the Pacific side and obviously the European side. So there really wasn't a huge push to recruit. But at the same time, they used kind of the depression as, hey, this is a job. This is 20amonth. This is free room and board. This is. You can chance to see the world, to get out of your small town and to kind of see the world. And so that was kind of where their recruitment tactics were.
- [19:06]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. Okay. So for a long list of reasons, he decides to leave everything he knows and loves to go out there and have his adventure. But he doesn't go straight to Hawaii, right?
- [19:15]
Nikki Stratton
He does not. So he started his training, so his boot camp in the Great Lakes facility, which is actually still in existence today, virtually, I would say, almost very similar to what it was in 1941. I'm sure they have a few upgrades. And then he headed out to a place called Bremerton, Washington Shipyard. And the very first time that he actually saw an ocean was at the Puget Sound. So in Great Lakes, they have him training, but it's on a lake, so it's not necessarily the same as the ocean. So the very first time he had ever seen an ocean was when he saw the USS Arizona. And it was actually pulled out of the water in dry dock. And so it was almost like 20ft overhead. And like, you can see the bow, you can see the stern, you, you can see the underneath piece of it. You could see the, like the beam line all the way through. They were retrofitting her and painting her.
- [19:59]
Mike Rowe
A mighty ship.
- [20:00]
Nikki Stratton
A mighty ship, yes.
- [20:01]
Mike Rowe
And one that had been around, though it wasn't just built for the war. This thing had been, what, 1914 or something like that?
- [20:07]
Nikki Stratton
I believe it was commissioned in 1916 in the Brooklyn shipyard.
- [20:10]
Mike Rowe
Wow.
- [20:11]
Nikki Stratton
So it was part of World War I, but didn't really see any action. It did, I believe, escort President Hoover over to the Paris Peace Accords when they happened.
- [20:19]
Mike Rowe
So he goes through a boot camp, which is instructive in the book, and he checks all the boxes. And does he get to Hawaii on the Arizona?
- [20:30]
Nikki Stratton
He does. So his basically out of boot camp. His first and only ship for his first time around in the Navy was the Arizona. So he hopped on out of Bremerton. They actually didn't go to Hawaii right away. They were on the coast of California. So they were kind of sailing up and down California working on maneuvers. And basically he was learning his battle station. He was a portside anti aircraft director setter. So basically his job was to kind of point the anti aircraft guns and then he lets them know and fire. But as in true, in the Navy you have multiple jobs. And so one of the things that they had him do, and he actually volunteered for one time, and one time only, was towing a motorized skiff out to Sea about 15 miles away from the Arizona. And behind it was a floating target. And so the Arizona would use their 15 inch guns, 14 inch guns, and they would fire to hit that floating target. And so he said the Arizona's guns were so accurate that they could hit that target from 15 miles away dead center. And he said it nearly capsized him in the skiff with his two crewmates. And he said out of all the jobs in the Navy, he said playing target was not his favorite.
- [21:35]
Chuck
Wait a minute, he's in a skiff dragging the target behind him. Like how far behind?
- [21:39]
Nikki Stratton
I would say probably a couple more feet. Not far enough. It was close enough to where like the boat nearly capsized.
- [21:45]
Mike Rowe
Wow.
- [21:46]
Chuck
Yeah, that is a dangerous job.
- [21:48]
Mike Rowe
Well, the thing that strikes me is just the sheer wonder of it all for this kid from the middle of a dust bowl essentially one minute, and the next minute it would be like seeing a, like a spaceship or something. Just the technology, the massiveness of it all those other men, the camaraderie, the band, everything, it must have been just. How do you process that?
- [22:16]
Nikki Stratton
I mean, for an 18 year old kid, he was free for the first time in his life really. And he was surrounded by young kids his age who had dealt with the exact same things that he had dealt with. And they grew up in the dust bowl. They grew up in, you know, the depression. And so they were all looking for the same escape. They all wanted a job, they all wanted to contribute to their country. And so this was the way that they could.
- [22:38]
Mike Rowe
Here's a quick little philosophical question to ruminate on for the holidays. Would you rather A receive a gift that you genuinely love and look forward to using, or B give a gift that makes the recipient feel the exact same way? If you answered A, congratulations, you're a psychopath, this is not the season of receiving, you selfish ingrate, it's the season of giving. So here's what I suggest. Give yourself an aura digital picture frame and then give another one to all your friends if you have any. That's what I did last Christmas. I gave away half a dozen of these things. And since then, every single person who got one has called me to tell me how much they love them. Aura frames not only display an unlimited number of photos, they allow you to share those photos with an unlimited number of friends and family members. It only takes a couple minutes to set it up, comes with free unlimited storage and there are absolutely no hidden fees or subscriptions. And now for a limited time, you can get $35 off or as best selling car for matte frames by using promo code Mike when you check out that's a U R A frames.com promo code Mike. Terms and conditions apply at a U R A Frames promo code Mike. A U R a U R a U R A frames.com Mike when does he get to Hawaii?
- [24:16]
Nikki Stratton
They pulled into Hawaii, I believe later that summer. You know, I always liken this to like the Dorothy, like the wizard of Oz. And so for him, you know, being in Nebraska where I'd gray and it's brown and it's like those are kind of like the colors that you see with the exception of a random green here and there with the corn. But when you pull into Hawaii it's almost turns into like a technicolor type deal where you see more colors of fish than he ever knew existed. Like the watercolor was completely different than he had ever seen. And so it was very much like Dorothy, you know, stepping into the world of Oz, when that color change happens.
- [24:51]
Mike Rowe
Not in Kansas anymore.
- [24:52]
Nikki Stratton
Very much so. Yeah. Very much so.
- [24:55]
Mike Rowe
So this would have been early in 1941.
- [25:00]
Nikki Stratton
Yes, early 1941.
- [25:02]
Mike Rowe
Okay, so he's there in Hawaii. He gets used to it enough. Does he go native? Is he. I mean, do you get soft? I wonder. I mean, you're stationed in Hawaii. You're not really at war. It's just in the temptations. I'm just thinking of those brothels again.
- [25:17]
Nikki Stratton
You know, Hotel street was very popular with the sailors, as I'm sure a lot of the stories have said. And Hotel street actually still. The street itself actually exists today in Hawaii. There's the original USS Arizona bar, Smith's Union. It still exists there. It's still a bar owned and operated by a man who loves the Arizona. That virtually hasn't changed. My grandfather was very. He took his father's vice to heart, I think, really the only, like, crazy thing, I guess if you could call it that, that he did at that time was he got a tattoo. So the very first tattoo he got were a pair of swallows on his arm. And swallows are very unique to naval culture. And then as he kind of progressed through his naval career, he ended up with a full Spanish galleon ship on his chest. So that's kind of where he went.
- [26:06]
Mike Rowe
Wow. From a couple of swallows to a galleon.
- [26:10]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [26:10]
Mike Rowe
I want the whole ship.
- [26:11]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [26:12]
Mike Rowe
What is the significance of the swallow?
- [26:14]
Nikki Stratton
You know, I can't remember offhand, but I believe swallows indicate the safe passage both out where you're going and coming back. But don't quote me on that. I'm not 100% sure. All right, I'll have to look that up.
- [26:26]
Mike Rowe
So there he is, doing his thing, biding his time, living the life, and December 6th comes along. He goes to bed next morning. That's not in the playbook.
- [26:40]
Nikki Stratton
Not in the playbook at all. His best friend that he worked with, Harold Nelson, had actually gotten sick and was in sick bay about a week beforehand. And so my grandfather got up very early because he was going to go to church. It was a Sunday. He was going to go to church on the fantail of the Arizona. And he ended up having some early breakfast and grabbed some oranges and was getting ready to head down into sickbay to go see Harle. But unfortunately, he never made it. And the sirens started blaring for the attack on Pearl Harbor. So he ended up dropping his hat full of oranges and sprinting to his battle station. And thankfully, he made it there unscathed, but some of his shipmates did not.
- [27:15]
Mike Rowe
Yeah, unscathed is not really a word that applies to that day, it seems like. I mean, everybody got a little something on them. The lucky ones did, anyway. But there were.
- [27:27]
Chuck
I just looked up the swallows.
- [27:28]
Mike Rowe
Yeah.
- [27:28]
Chuck
And it says that sailors earn a new swallow tattoo for every 5,000 nautical miles traveled, which is about 5,754 regular miles.
- [27:37]
Mike Rowe
Huh.
- [27:38]
Nikki Stratton
Very cool.
- [27:38]
Mike Rowe
Oh, there you go.
- [27:39]
Nikki Stratton
There we go.
- [27:40]
Mike Rowe
There was no talk of tattoos on that morning.
- [27:42]
Nikki Stratton
No talk of tattoos.
- [27:44]
Mike Rowe
In fact, I dare say many were burned off.
- [27:47]
Nikki Stratton
I would say the majority of my grandfather's tattoos were burned off. So when I knew him as a person who could appreciate that, I would say pretty much all the tattoos on his arms were gone. The swallows did survive because they were on the underside of his arm. But for the most part, the majority of the galleon ship was kind of there. Not all there, but the rest of his tattoos were not.
- [28:10]
Mike Rowe
The account in the book. And he wrote this with. He had some help, I assume. Ken.
- [28:15]
Nikki Stratton
Ken Guyer, Yes.
- [28:17]
Mike Rowe
I'm curious about how they collaborated on this. It's so tight. Didn't you think, Chuck, reading it just. I'm surprised at how quickly I was turning the pages on a story that I already knew.
- [28:29]
Nikki Stratton
It's a very easy read.
- [28:30]
Mike Rowe
It is easy, but it's horrifying. It's horrifying in both the detail and the simplicity. You know, it's almost like the sentences are. It's almost Hemingway esque. It's very short.
- [28:46]
Chuck
Yes.
- [28:48]
Mike Rowe
And my skin fell off. What?
- [28:51]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [28:51]
Mike Rowe
It's like sentence after sentence. And the exponential effect of that is really one of immersion. They did a great job.
- [28:59]
Nikki Stratton
The book itself is a testament not only to my grandfather's story, but to Ken Guyer. And that's because he really listened to my grandfather. So Ken would come over to my grandfather's house. He was 91, 92 at this point, so he was well into his 90s. He basically said, okay, nobody can be in the house when we talk. It's just you and me, Don. And a lot of that is because he wanted my grandfather to feel safe, and he did not want any disruptions and any distractions because, you know, when you're a person who has been in a situation like my grandfather, yes, you can kind of talk about it and you can kind of gloss over to the fact. The fact of everything that happened. But Ken wanted to go deeper, and he knew that if my grandmother there was there, my father was there, that My grandfather would not be able to slip into the psyche of a 19 year old kid and really get into the nitty gritty details of what he remembers. And so I think it took him two to three weeks. Every single day of Ken coming over to the house. And basically my mom or my dad and my grandmother would leave the house and they would come back four or five hours later and they'd asked how it goes and my grandfather would be like it was fine. And so basically the reason why you see short sentences like my skin fell off is because that is my grandfather's voice. That's how he was, that's how he spoke. Yeah.
- [30:17]
Mike Rowe
I won't ask you to go through all the knit and all the grit, but had he talked to you about this beforehand? Joe George, for instance, and the neighboring ship, what was it? The Vals.
- [30:30]
Nikki Stratton
The Vestal.
- [30:31]
Mike Rowe
The Vestal and the captain over there. And the insubordination that ultimately led to his survival.
- [30:39]
Chuck
That's an amazing story.
- [30:40]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. I would like for people to at least know that. Spoiler alert, folks. But it's important.
- [30:46]
Nikki Stratton
No matter how many times I tell it, it's always going to be. The core of the story is the same, but obviously the details, you know, just kind of depending on who I'm talking to. I try to tailor it to whom I'm talking to, but there was a neighboring ship called the USS Vestal. It was a repair ship. It was moored alongside the Arizona. It was still fixing some of the hull damage that the Arizona had had when it hit the Oklahoma on November 22nd.
- [31:10]
Chuck
It wasn't supposed to be correct.
- [31:11]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be in Pearl harbor because it was actually on its. Should have been on its way back to Bremerton, washing complete overhaul. But as they were doing maneuvers, the Oklahoma rammed right into her side and she was like listing, I think 30% of the ship. And so thankfully they were able to fix most of that. And she got back into Pearl Harbor. And so the Vestal was actually, you know, fixing the rest of that damage. And there was a man by the name of Joe George. And I should preface this by saying our family had no idea who this man was. We didn't know his name. We knew he existed. We just, we didn't know where he's from. We didn't know his name. So for the majority of my life, he was just, just a guy. He was the guy. And so Sailor, the guy in a.
- [31:53]
Mike Rowe
Story that you've heard around the edges.
- [31:57]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah, yeah. And so Joe George, he was a sailor aboard the Vestal. He was the heavyweight champion of the Navy. He was a boxer, and so absolutely loved to fight. And I always say what Joe loved more than fighting inside the ring was fighting outside of the ring. And so on December 6, actually, December 5, Joe was in a bout with the Marine Corps. And it was heavyweight versus heavyweight. And it was touted as the, you know, the biggest fight of the century. And Joe ended up knocking the guy out. And I think under a minute, it was heralded to be this long, brutal bout. And so Joe just was like, I'm not gonna deal with that and just knock the guy out. And so he did what any other sailor would do after winning a bout. He went out to the bars and celebrated. Sure. And so him and his buddies were out, and some sailors from the Marine Corps came into the bar they were in. They objected of his knockout of their sailor. And Joe did what anybody else would do. He started a fight and knocked the one that spoke up first cold on the floor. So he took on, I think, three or four sailors, knocked him out, knocked him around. Took a couple punches himself. MPs were called. He was taken aback. Board the Vestal. His commanding officer was like, that's it. That's enough. This is your third strike, or whatever it was. You're gonna face the summary court martial in the morning. We're gonna put you in the brig until Monday morning, which you'll. When you'll get your summary court mar. So Joe's in the brig. They actually ended up letting him out on Sunday morning early. He doesn't know why. We still don't know why, but they let him out. Maybe the captain had a change of heart or something before the attack. Before the attack. They let him out right before the attack.
- [33:31]
Mike Rowe
That's because a summary court martial basically would mean you're essentially guilty.
- [33:36]
Nikki Stratton
Pretty much. Yep.
- [33:36]
Mike Rowe
Like, we've just.
- [33:37]
Nikki Stratton
We're done with you. We're Washington.
- [33:38]
Mike Rowe
You're guilty on the face of it.
- [33:40]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [33:40]
Mike Rowe
And later, we'll have a little ceremony. Yeah, exactly. We'll check the box, go directly to jail.
- [33:45]
Nikki Stratton
He knew his life in the Navy was over. So summary court martial. You're done in the Navy, dishonorably discharged. He knew it was coming. December 7th happened. So he was let out early that morning. As he was walking back to his bunk, that's when the alarm started blaring. That's when the attack on Pearl harbor happened. So Joe, being a man who was facing a court martial, you know, did what any man would do. He Joined the fight. He picked up an ax and started fighting fires. He started trying to get some of the lines cut from the Arizona because they were tied along each other.
- [34:16]
Mike Rowe
Absolute sitting ducks.
- [34:17]
Nikki Stratton
Absolute sitting ducks.
- [34:18]
Mike Rowe
Tied to each other.
- [34:18]
Nikki Stratton
Tied to each other.
- [34:19]
Mike Rowe
Complete sneak attack.
- [34:21]
Nikki Stratton
Cold boilers, no engines. I mean, it would take three to four hours for those boilers and those engines to get going if they really needed to get going. So lucky enough that I believe it was the Nevada was the only one that had her engines up and running. And they were able to kind of get out and run aground. And so they didn't block the channel.
- [34:36]
Mike Rowe
But interesting, too, to point out Zeros are coming in just over the surface, dropping torpedo bombs in a way that makes it almost impossible to hit them.
- [34:46]
Nikki Stratton
Exactly. I mean, my grandfather mentions in his book and was very candid about this, he could actually see the whites of the pilot's eyes. He could see them smiling, smiling and laughing as they gunned down sailors.
- [34:58]
Mike Rowe
Because the torpedoes are slamming into the boats and then they're strafing the sailors who are running around trying to deal with it. Meanwhile, the guys who are on the guns can see the bombers way up there, but they're out of range.
- [35:12]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. So the fuse timers, the high altitude shells that they used at the time had fuse timers. And so they were bursting before they reached the right altitude in order to hit those bombers. And so what they did is they had to lengthen the fuse and then try again. But because the attack happened, you know, the fuel and the earth, the ammunition and stuff was not being loaded and sent up. And so one of the guys in my grandfather's director actually left to go get more ammunition. He was never seen again.
- [35:41]
Mike Rowe
Wow. Okay, so the attack's underway. Joe George, for reasons we don't understand, has been released from the brig aboard the Vestal. Your granddad is in a state of absolute pandemonium. A couple thousand sailors running here and there, trying to make sense of what's going on. And then the big one hits.
- [36:02]
Nikki Stratton
And then the big one hits. It hit on the forward part of the magazine. It basically went through a number of decks into the lower part of the Arizona where the powder was black powder. So basically it ignited a million gallons of aviation gas and then probably around the same of black powder. And so basically what happened was, is the ship itself lifted almost 100ft out of the water straight up. So just think of it as like a Roman candle just going like that, and it slammed right back down. So the entire front of the battleship was blown off and so what it did is it sent a concussion wave across the entire island of Oahu. It blew men off decks. But basically anything that was in the forward part of the deck, which included my grandfather and his battle station, was almost instantly vaporized. If you didn't have any type of surrounding metal to help you, you were pretty much instantly vaporized. I mean, the captain of the Arizona was holding on to the rails in the command center and all they found of him was his clasp ring and it was welded to that railing. That's how hot and that's how bad that blast was.
- [37:09]
Mike Rowe
And the flashburns were interesting too. I mean, really, these guys are. Most of them were asleep, some were having breakfast. But the uniform for the day was.
- [37:18]
Nikki Stratton
What, a white cotton shirt and cotton shorts because it was a Sunday. So the normal uniform of long pants and a white shirt on Sundays, they were a little bit more casual. And so pretty much anything that wasn't instantly like that wasn't covered. So basically all your arms and all of your legs was almost flash fried and instant first degree burns.
- [37:39]
Mike Rowe
So that happens. And very quickly what's left of the Arizona turns into like a kiln.
- [37:47]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. You know, obviously you have a massive explosion and then everything is on fire. So the deck was made of teak and so that was instantly on fire. But you know what happens when you heat up metal? Right. When something you put heat under metal, it just, it expands. Right. So, you know, my grandfather remembers his shoes melting. So he was basically standing on burned feet in his battle station because the soles of his shoes had completely melted off. Most of his clothing was gone because it had been burned off. And it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. They said at its highest temperature, it was the same temperature as lava coming out of the Kilauea volcano, which was about 2,000 degrees.
- [38:23]
Mike Rowe
So you're standing on magma.
- [38:25]
Nikki Stratton
Pretty much.
- [38:26]
Mike Rowe
They're still shooting at you. The torpedoes are still coming.
- [38:30]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [38:30]
Mike Rowe
You're seeing your friends vaporized all around you. Your ship is sinking and burning at the same time. Men are in the water by the hundreds. Oil is in the water, on fire, a foot to two feet thick. In many cases, it was the oil that was holding the people up.
- [38:49]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [38:49]
Mike Rowe
So you're wedged in there. It's an inferno.
- [38:52]
Nikki Stratton
Yep. You did forget one element, though.
- [38:55]
Mike Rowe
What's that?
- [38:55]
Nikki Stratton
Sharks.
- [38:56]
Mike Rowe
Oh, fun.
- [38:57]
Nikki Stratton
In the harbor because there was so much blood and so much decay and so much dead body in the, in the harbor. Sharks came in from the ocean because they smelled the blood. And so my Grandfather looked down and could see sharks picking people apart.
- [39:11]
Mike Rowe
It's so odd how I only associate that with the Indianapolis. But of course, it's not like the sharks are just dedicated to one ill fated boat. Okay, so all of that's happening. It's getting hotter and hotter. Your grandfather tries to describe the pain. And as I read it, my feeling was he just gave up on trying to find the words, which is a very powerful way.
- [39:42]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [39:43]
Mike Rowe
One time in the Boy Scouts, Nikki, sitting around a campfire, I took a stick and I put a styrofoam cup on the end of it because I was 15 and curious about the way things burned. It was the green flame that attracted me to it and I held it up to watch it burn, of course, and a blob of styrofoam fell down onto my hand and it burned so bad I thought maybe I would just weep, you know, that little piece of Styrofoam burning through my skin, Chuck. Absolutely indescribably.
- [40:11]
Chuck
Sounds horrible, Mike.
- [40:12]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. And then I read this book and I thought, well, how about that?
- [40:16]
Nikki Stratton
You know, at some point, I think the body. I think there's two things that happen. So first of all, the body goes into shock, and so it's just like, okay, this is where we are. Like, there's nothing we can do to change our circumstances right now. We're just going to do what we can to survive. But also, as you start to burn away layers of, of your skin, you effectively almost cauterize your nerves as well. So as you get deep enough into the skin, basically the nerves just go dead because they've been cauterized and cut off from where they are. And so you kind of just go numb from that. So I think he experienced a little bit of both of those. And at one point it was just 100% survival mode. Right? You just put yourself into a state of almost meditation as you can in a chaotic environment that you're in. Just saying, okay, what's the next thing? Right, we've done this. What's the next thing? We've shut the door. So my grandfather ended up shutting the director door to try to alleviate some of the smoke and fire from coming in.
- [41:12]
Mike Rowe
Just describe what the director is real quick.
- [41:13]
Nikki Stratton
So the director is. Think of it as a little house that's on the side of the Arizona. Pretty much when you look at the most famous photo of the Arizona and you see it kind of tilted sideways, there's like a little house and a little door. My grandfather's battle station was Right in there. And so when the big bomb hit, basically what happened is it blew that door open. And so all the smoke and all the flames and everything were coming through. And so my grandfather, who was closest to that door, reached out with his right arm and tried to close it. He ended up did. Getting it closed. You know, obviously it burned his palm very badly, but it scorched his right arm, almost like blackened to the point where he could pretty much no longer move it. And so they were basically. There was him and five others that were trapped in this director. One had passed away from the blast because he hit his head against the bulkhead and his skull caved in from the pressure. And so they were basically.
- [42:03]
Chuck
Yes, the most famous one.
- [42:05]
Nikki Stratton
That is the most famous picture. So this right here, that area right there, that is my grandfather's battle station.
- [42:14]
Mike Rowe
You think he's in there? He is in there when that photo is taken.
- [42:17]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [42:18]
Chuck
Yeah. Crazy.
- [42:20]
Nikki Stratton
Y. More than likely.
- [42:23]
Mike Rowe
I mean, it's just unthinkable.
- [42:24]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [42:25]
Mike Rowe
Okay.
- [42:25]
Nikki Stratton
So it was him and five others that were trapped in that little box next to. With the vest. And, and.
- [42:32]
Chuck
And they're over top of a burning.
- [42:34]
Nikki Stratton
They're over top of a burning. Sinking.
- [42:36]
Mike Rowe
They're a cauldron, pretty much.
- [42:38]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. They were. They were in pot. Right. So it just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. The Arizona burned for almost four days afterwards before that they could actually get on there and start recovering bodies.
- [42:47]
Mike Rowe
So part of you is thinking, I've got to jump over. And then you look over the side and you say, I can't jump over.
- [42:51]
Nikki Stratton
I can't jump over.
- [42:52]
Mike Rowe
That's out of the frying pan into the fire.
- [42:54]
Nikki Stratton
Yep. The water was on fire. There were sharks. You. There was just no way.
- [42:58]
Mike Rowe
So in this moment of absolute futility and despair, they look across at the vestal and who do they see?
- [43:07]
Nikki Stratton
They see a very large man carrying a hatchet, which happened to be a man by the name of Joe George.
- [43:17]
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- [45:04]
Nikki Stratton
My grandfather and his shipmates started hooping and hollering, as obviously their singed vocal cords would allow. And they said, hey, Vesta, hooligan. Hey, Vestal, throw us a line. Hey, Vestal, how far away are they? You figured it's probably about 75 to 100ft. And this is obviously between the two ships. The Arizona was kind of tilted, but it was still fairly high up. So they were kind of like this. So Joe looked over, saw the men in the Arizona, and he kind of was looking around. So he got a monkey's fist, which is like a ball of twine and it's wrapped a bunch of times. And he knew that if he could get that line over there, that they could kind of shimmy off and get to the other side. And the Vestal. And so.
- [45:42]
Mike Rowe
So the Monke monkey's fist is attached to an actual line, a thin, like.
- [45:47]
Nikki Stratton
A heaving or like a thin line. So that they would attach another line over and then they'd pull it across.
- [45:52]
Mike Rowe
Yep.
- [45:53]
Nikki Stratton
So I mean, think about it. I mean, the director itself, the window is probably maybe a yard by a yard. That's just kind of how I imagine it. And to get that monkey's fist through there, it had to been just a. I mean, there's obviously smoke and fire and all of that. So as a once in a million.
- [46:09]
Chuck
And it took a few times, a few tries before he did. Right.
- [46:12]
Mike Rowe
So Joe is on the vessel and he's throwing this thing about 75ft through the air up into a target that's probably a cubic yard. Yes, that's what he's shooting for.
- [46:23]
Nikki Stratton
That's what he's shooting for.
- [46:24]
Mike Rowe
And your pop and four of his friends are in there getting cooked.
- [46:27]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [46:28]
Mike Rowe
Meanwhile, Joe's purpose out there with the.
- [46:31]
Nikki Stratton
Ax was cutting lines from the vestal to the ears.
- [46:36]
Mike Rowe
To get away from the Arizona.
- [46:37]
Nikki Stratton
To get away from the Arizona.
- [46:38]
Mike Rowe
And in the midst of Joe George's trying this impossible Hail Mary shot, his captain comes down who, for reasons we still don't understand, let him out of jail earlier that day and says what?
- [46:51]
Nikki Stratton
And says, cut all ties to the Arizona. And this included, at that point, when his commanding officer came down, Joe had made the throw. He had got it into the Arizona. They had just tied off the heavier heaving line. So it's probably a line probably 2 or 3 inches thick. And so his commanding officer, officer says come down and says, cut all ties to the Arizona, including that one, the one that he just tied. And Joe's like, no, those guys are over in the Arizona. They're going to come across. He's like the commanding officer basically looked at him and said, they're dead already. Like, just look at them. There's nothing left of them. They look like ghosts. Like you could only see the whites of their eyes, they were so badly burned. And Joe stood up tall. And again, you have to remember, Joe is a Navy fighter, a heavyweight fighter. He had an ax in his hand as well and said, no, need it. But he had it, didn't need it, and said, no, I'm not going to leave those men over there. They're going to make it off. And his commanding officer told him again, he's like, cut that line. So Joe kind of walked up to him a little bit more, probably intimidated him more than enough or more than he probably should have, and said, no, I'm not cutting that line. And the commanding officer decided that day that it was probably better to find himself elsewhere, dealing with other things than Joe George, heavyweight boxing champion of the Navy.
- [48:06]
Mike Rowe
He's had a big 24 hours. He's probably hungover still. Maybe.
- [48:09]
Chuck
But didn't his commanding officer threaten to court martial him as well?
- [48:12]
Nikki Stratton
Yep, he did. And he said he's like, I'm already gonna be court martialed anyways. It doesn't really matter.
- [48:16]
Mike Rowe
I've already been found guilty.
- [48:18]
Nikki Stratton
So Joe is the only reason why I'm here.
- [48:22]
Chuck
Wow, that's amazing.
- [48:23]
Mike Rowe
Well, but it gets crazier. It gets crazy.
- [48:26]
Nikki Stratton
It does.
- [48:26]
Mike Rowe
I mean, it's kind of a miracle. It's like throwing a bullseye about 50ft away from a dartboard. Like, nice shot. But he makes the shot finally. But now all that has to happen is these men who have been burned to a crisp have to crawl arm over arm from the Arizona to the Vestal. Below them is the fires of Mordor. Right?
- [48:53]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [48:54]
Mike Rowe
That's the most harrowing part of the book. Yeah, the handover. I mean, his skin's gone.
- [49:00]
Nikki Stratton
Skin's gone.
- [49:02]
Mike Rowe
Tell it.
- [49:03]
Nikki Stratton
So my grandfather was the second to cross. The guy that crossed first wanted to make sure that it was okay. And he was actually burned less because he actually had pants on that day. So he climbed over. He's like, yeah, let's go. So my grandfather gets on the rope. Obviously, his skin is all burned, blackened. He, you know, his fingerprints. I'll tell that story in a second. But climbs hand over hand across the burning water. You have to remember, obviously, burning water. You have to remember sharks. You have to remember oil. But obviously, the planes were still strafing at the same time they were shooting at him. They didn't hit him, thankfully, but they were shooting at him from crossing that line. And I'm sure you on dirty jobs know this. When you get to the center part of a line, even if it is a little bit lower, what happens?
- [49:43]
Mike Rowe
It dips. It doesn't matter how tight you make it.
- [49:45]
Nikki Stratton
Exactly. And so the last, probably 20, 30ft, was completely uphill. And so when he finally, as he was going, Joe just. My grandfather remembers this so clearly. Joe kept yelling at him, let's go, kid. Come on, you can do it. Don't look. One hand in front of the other. Let's go. You can do it. Keep coming. And so when he finally landed on the deck of the Vestal, he knew he was relatively safe. He was obviously off the burning ship. Pearl harbor was still happening. Strafing was still happening. But he looked down at his arms, hopefully. I don't gross you guys out too badly, but he basically just kind of went like this and pulled the skin down his arms like a tube sock. So basically, when you think of a tube sock and you roll it down. And we asked him later in life why he did that. And, you know, as you pointed out with the book being very simple sentences, he had a very simp. Simple answer. And he said it was in the way.
- [50:38]
Mike Rowe
I'm struck the unbroken thing vis a vis your pop and all those other guys. But I'm also just struck by this weird duality in men and in the way we think of Joe George, like the night before. He's a brawler. He's probably a bull in some ways. He's had a few drinks and he just loves to knock heads. It just feels like today, based on that character assessment alone, we would dismiss him as the very definition of everything that's toxic and masculine. Right. But within 24 hours, he's doing about the most selfless thing you could ever hope. I mean, he's got everything but the cape on Nikki.
- [51:26]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. He saved six lives.
- [51:28]
Mike Rowe
Come on, boys.
- [51:28]
Nikki Stratton
Six.
- [51:29]
Mike Rowe
You can do it.
- [51:30]
Nikki Stratton
Yep.
- [51:30]
Mike Rowe
The night before, you could have just as easily been thrown him through a window.
- [51:34]
Nikki Stratton
Exactly. Yeah. We're very good friends with the Taylor family, the George family, and his daughter, she's like, you know, my dad wasn't perfect. He was a drinker, he liked to fight. But, you know, later on in his life, when he met his wife, Joanne's mother, she tempered him out and he ended up, you know, he had a full.
- [51:55]
Mike Rowe
Women will do that.
- [51:56]
Chuck
A good woman will do that. Yeah.
- [51:57]
Mike Rowe
Oh, no. Now see, that's going to get you in trouble. Why? Saying a good woman will do that, really? It's 2024, genius people actually listen to this.
- [52:06]
Nikki Stratton
But, you know, he had a full career in the Navy. He went another Joe George Jordan.
- [52:10]
Mike Rowe
Find his picture, Chuck.
- [52:11]
Nikki Stratton
It's got to be there somewhere.
- [52:12]
Mike Rowe
20 years.
- [52:13]
Nikki Stratton
Full 20 years in the Navy. So nothing like. He basically had a commendation written in his. His military jacket that said, commended for, you know, saving five lives. Six lives off the Arizona. That little piece was lost to us for, I want to say, when we first started looking, when we first started trying. So 16 years, but it was 70 years.
- [52:35]
Mike Rowe
How does that get lost? That's like saying, yeah, Jefferson, Good guy, misplaced the declaration. Never knew he did that. That was a good one. I mean, that's one of the defining moments in the man's life.
- [52:49]
Nikki Stratton
Yes. So the only way we would have found him is he gave.
- [52:52]
Chuck
Is that him?
- [52:53]
Nikki Stratton
That's him.
- [52:54]
Mike Rowe
That's Joe George.
- [52:55]
Nikki Stratton
That's Joe George.
- [52:56]
Mike Rowe
Oh, that's just nothing but mischief and. Well, it's everything we've talked about. You can see it in that face. That guy's just as soon likely to pull over and change your tire, knock your teeth out.
- [53:05]
Chuck
Yeah, right. Maybe both.
- [53:07]
Mike Rowe
Who plays him in the movie that needs to be made about this whole thing.
- [53:12]
Nikki Stratton
If we had our choice, I'd say maybe Alan Richardson, he's the guy that plays Jackery's Reacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same body type, same virtual kind of big guy, fighter, you know, things like that. So I think, like in the old.
- [53:26]
Mike Rowe
Days, maybe George Kennedy could have done it.
- [53:28]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. You know, but we're actually pursuing this, you Know, it kind of just with the writer strike and everything, where we were working on getting it turned into a movie. And we're hopeful. We would love to have Tom Holland as my grandfather. And the only reason being is because when you put those two side by side, they look almost identical. It's actually kind of spooky.
- [53:48]
Mike Rowe
By the way, quick sidebar, Don Stratton was the bass singer in an international champion barbershop quartet called the Oriole four.
- [54:01]
Chuck
Different Don Stratton.
- [54:02]
Nikki Stratton
I was gonna say my grandfather may have had a secret life. I didn't know.
- [54:05]
Mike Rowe
Well, when Chuck sent me this book, you know, weeks ago, and I looked, I'm like, Donald Stratton. I was like, dude, we know Don Stratton. I know. And it's not that Don Stratton.
- [54:13]
Nikki Stratton
Different Donald.
- [54:13]
Mike Rowe
But maybe it's not such a sidebar because is a part of this story, too. And the fate of the Arizona band. Oh, my God. That's worth a quick riff.
- [54:25]
Nikki Stratton
I mean, to this day, the trophy that's awarded for the best band in the Navy is still known as the USS Arizona trophy. It's dedicated to them and their service. So at the time, the Arizona was the best band. They were competing in the Battle of the Bands in Pearl Harbor. And so they had played the night before. Their battle stations was very, very deep in the hold. They were running up the munitions, up the conveyor belts and everything like that. And so when. When Pearl harbor started happening, every single one of them ran down to their battle station. And unfortunately, when the big bomb hit, there was just anybody lower in the lower decks just was instantly vaporized.
- [55:00]
Mike Rowe
Fortunately, unfortunately, I'm not sure either word works. But in the pantheon of things that can happen, instant vaporization on that day.
- [55:10]
Chuck
Blessing may have been.
- [55:12]
Mike Rowe
Yeah, I mean, you just hate to say it out loud, but talk to if you would or if you can, about the incredibly underrated role of music on a ship in the armed forces in general. I just don't think a lot of people think about that.
- [55:29]
Nikki Stratton
Well, I mean, you have to think, first of all, if we're looking in 1941, you have to remember they didn't have TV, they didn't have WiFi. They didn't have Internet. So they used to do movies on the fan tale. So they would set up a screen and they would, you know, put movies on. But the only really other form of entertainment was music. And so bands in the 1940s especially, were hugely sought after. Because when you're out at sea, when you're in the Middle of nowhere. Music is what connects us to our humanity. And so having a band on board to entertain and having a band on board to remind us who we are and that we're humans, it was a big deal. I mean, it's still a big deal to this day. In the American armed forces, you know, they have the naval band, which obviously is my favorite because I'm a Navy girl. They're fantastic. You know, they take pride in their craft and they're skilled musicians, but at the same time, they're also Navy sailors. They have a battle station, they have orders, they have a duty outside of just the music piece. And so they're an integral part of our United States Armed forces.
- [56:30]
Mike Rowe
Your pop writes with such affection about those men. Yes, about all of the men, actually. And I'll tell you something else that occurred to me were. I guess it didn't occur to me, but I just. It made me angry, Nikki, all over again. And I don't know how to feel about that, but angry the way I was on September 12th, obviously I wasn't around on December 8th of 1941, but that's the closest I can come to thinking about just the outrage, just the. It made me think things I can't say out loud, just like a visceral anger. And your pop is honest about that. It's funny, he quotes FDR a lot, talking about the importance of doing this for humanity, civilization, and not vengeance. But he almost always follows it with a parenthetical. Now for me, I was pissed and I wanted vengeance. And talk a little bit about, about somehow he survives this and somehow they get him out of Hawaii and over to Mare island, and somehow he gets out of that and then he does something truly unthinkable. But go ahead.
- [57:50]
Nikki Stratton
So once my grandfather, they got him on an open air truck, they got him to like the triage center and where only the worst kind of were given a bed. He was given a bed right away. The nurses famously marked lipstick, the red lipstick on the men who've had a morphine shot. And they did that for two reasons. One, to not overdose them because they couldn't tell if they had had one or not. And two, because they were rationing the supply. And my grandfather was there for a couple weeks, but he remembers very viscerally the first couple nights that he was there and you know, men were screaming for their mothers, for their gods, for the nurses to hit them on the head with a bedpan. Anything to put them out of their misery. But what he remembers most is the darkness and that's because at the time, they did not know if the Japanese weren't going to come back. So the entire island was blacked out. No lights, no nothing. And so that's what he remembers the most, is just being alone in the dark, not knowing if he was going to live, die, or if the Japanese were going to come back. It was a couple weeks later when, you know, they were starting to send some of these sailors back stateside. And my grandfather piped up and said, I want to go back home. And the orderly turned to him and was like, no, you're not going to make it. You're going to die. On the way back, my grandfather's like, I think I'm going to make it, being the stubborn man that he is. And he's like, what do I got to do? What do I got to do to go home? And he's like, all right, well, if you can get yourself out, up out of bed without assistance and stand while we change your sheets, I'll put you on the next one home. So he got himself up. He stood on burned and blackened feet for probably what felt like an eternity and basically just stood there while they changed his sheets. And true to his word, he was on the next boat home and ended up arriving in California on Christmas Day of 1941. So he was in recovery, and I think when he could finally stand again, he. His enlistment weight was about 160 pounds. And when he could finally stand again on his own, they weighed him, and he was about £82.
- [59:39]
Chuck
Oh, my God.
- [59:41]
Nikki Stratton
So all of his hair was gone. Part of his ear was missing. He couldn't move his right arm. And so then they started doing all of the triage and all the appointments and skin grafts and stuff. And so, you know, they used leeches to coax maggots, maggots to eat the dead skin, leeches to coax the new tissue to develop blood flow. And at one point, they actually took my grandfather back for his saltwater bath. So they used to do saltwater baths. You get saltwater or something in an open wound. It is not. So imagine your entire body submerged. So they usually gave him a shot of morphine. And then he remembers once they actually forgot to give him the shot of morphine before they submerged him. And the nurse just came running down because she was trying to find where he was. And you could hear where he was because he was screaming pretty good, gave him a shot of morphine, and kind of moved on with their lives. And so then they started doing Skin grafts. So they would take skin from his. His backside, because that was one of the only things that really wasn't burned. And so they would put it on his arms, hands, face had graphs, his feet had graphs. And then it finally came to a head when the doc pulled him aside and they wanted to amputate his right arm because they said it would never fully work again. And I think at that point, my grandfather said, I've had enough. Like, no more. Like, you're not taking my arm. We're done. I'm out. I'm tapping out. Like, we're done. No more treatments, no more anything. He said, you know, if you take my arm, you know, what kind of life would I lead? And so they discharged him, medically discharged him from the Navy. And because there was still a war going on, he ended up hitchhiking back to Nebraska, back home, as one does.
- [61:15]
Mike Rowe
Oh, no, I didn't. Oh, you're kidding me.
- [61:17]
Nikki Stratton
No. Yep, Hitchhiked back home.
- [61:20]
Mike Rowe
Oh.
- [61:21]
Nikki Stratton
So my great grandmother knew that he had survived at that point when he started making his way home. But she pretty much, for about a month, month, didn't know if he was alive or dead. And that's a lot of it, because it was chaotic. Obviously, we don't have the digital records that we do today. And so they were still trying to figure out who was alive, who was dead. And so all she knew is that he was missing in action. And there was another young man in my grandfather's graduating class that was on the Oklahoma, and he, unfortunately, did not make it. So Red Cloud had two boys from two of the most famous ships in Pearl Harbor. One survived, one did not. So my grandfather finally made it home. He recovered for a little while, and then his dad, being who his dad was, put him to work, which I think actually saved my grandfather because it kept his mind busy, it kept his body active. And so gradually, he started building up strength again. And my great grandfather ended up buying a bar. And so my grandfather was hauling beer kegs around the state. And so obviously, those things are not light. And so he actually started to develop movement and strength in his right arm again. And once he kind of realized that he was one of the only young men in town, he's like, all right, I'm ready to go back. And of course, my grandmother was. Or great grandmother was heartbroken. And she's like, you've done your duty. You don't need to go back. For him, it was a little more like he wanted some revenge. So his best friend, Harl, Nelson still aboard the Arizona, and he felt like he needed to go back for himself and for Harle and for the rest of his shipmates.
- [62:46]
Mike Rowe
This was the guy who he was going to see.
- [62:49]
Nikki Stratton
Correct.
- [62:50]
Mike Rowe
The morning of the attack.
- [62:51]
Nikki Stratton
Correct.
- [62:52]
Mike Rowe
Who I guess saved him.
- [62:54]
Nikki Stratton
Really, really saved him. Yep. Yep.
- [62:58]
Mike Rowe
I want to hop forward into, actually, I want to hear the story when you were in the fourth grade, but before we do that, I just want to circle back to the prostitutes that you so gently brought up and Hotel Road and the shortage of nurses in the wake of this calamity and what those women did.
- [63:18]
Nikki Stratton
I love this story. And it's a story that just is not told. It's not known to history. So the women of Hotel street, obviously a lot of their money was made through the sailors. Right. Keeping them company. And so what happened during Pearl harbor is they effectively stopped their normal business and they opened up all of their brothels and their rooms and housed injured sailors and nursed them back to health. They donated blood. And a lot of them went back to, like the Navy Corps and said, how can we help? What more can we do? And they're like, well, all that's left is just kind of dirty jobs. And so they're like, we'll take it. We'll do whatever we need to do. And so they ended up starting to clean bed pans, change sheets, and clean medical tubing.
- [63:59]
Mike Rowe
The smell, Nikki. Yes, the smell, yes. I've been in a hospital laundry before. This is that times what? Infinity.
- [64:07]
Nikki Stratton
Infinity. And on top of that, they didn't have enough nurses or doctors to go around to escort. Escort the sailors back home. And so they volunteered to hop on a ship and take care of these sailors as they cross the Pacific, which is known to be not nice waters, landing in California. And a lot of these, you know, women, they got to know the sailors through both their normal work and through. Through this. But unfortunately, when they were docked in California, these women wanted to see their sailors off, but unfortunately, the Navy would not allow them to exit the ship. They had to stay on the. And then they were just taken right back to Hawaii. So, unfortunately, a lot of them never got to say a truly heartfelt goodbye to their sailors that they took care of, which is unfortunate.
- [64:51]
Mike Rowe
But this is another movie, you know?
- [64:53]
Nikki Stratton
Absolutely.
- [64:54]
Mike Rowe
I mean, it's probably another movie all by itself. It'll be a heck of a scene and the one you want to do. But I just think it's so poetic and ironic and human that your great grandfather's bit of advice to your pop is Keep your nose clean and stay out of the brothels. And it's the women from. From the brothels who, when the chips are impossibly down, actually step up to bring.
- [65:21]
Chuck
Gave blood, too, right, Gale?
- [65:23]
Nikki Stratton
Gave blood.
- [65:24]
Mike Rowe
Standing in line to give blood. People were giving blood twice a day. It's really tempting for me because, like Dan Carlin, I get sucked into the. Just the minutia of the horror of these things that I think I kind of understand on one level, but can't possibly hope to. But I'm not going to do it because the book does a wonderful and important job of it. Flashing forward, you don't know any of this when you're in the fourth grade. You know, your pop was heroic, and you know where he was on the 7th of December. But tell me about your history teacher.
- [65:57]
Nikki Stratton
Oh, I love this story. So we were learning about history, the Pearl harbor history in fourth grade. And, you know, we were talking about it and everything like that, and I raised my hand and I said, you know, my grandfather was in Pearl Harbor. I said, he was on the Arizona. My teacher got very quiet and very serious, and he's like, Ms. Stratton, I need you to stay after class. Because it was kind of close to the end. I was like, ah, great, I'm in trouble. As, you know, a fourth grader does. And so he's like, I need to know everything. And so I ended up telling him what I knew, which was not a whole lot. And I realized that I didn't know my grandfather's story as much as I should. So I went home and I said, dad, you need to tell me about Grandpa. I said, we're learning about Pearl Harbor. And my teacher got really weird when I mentioned that Grandpa was on the Arizona. And I said, I want to know more. And so I ended up bringing some paper clippings in and I learned the story. But I was really able to learn a lot more when I was younger because I'd crawl up in my grandpa's lap and I'd say, grandpa, tell me about your boat. The boat piece of it always stuck with me because he would always kind of knock me behind the ear and say, cricket. And he'd be like, cricket. He's like, it's not a boat, it's a ship. And so that, to me, always stuck with me. And it's going to stick with me through this new submarine that we find ourselves in, because I will always call it a ship. And even though it's technically a boat, but we can get into that later. Too. But I was just absorb all of this knowledge and I kind of became this family historian as I kind of grew up and I grew older. I would collect stories, I would listen and I would go to Pearl harbor and I'd listen to all of our Pearl harbor survivors and the Arizona survivors. And you know, then we started learning and wanting to know who the man who saved my grandfather's life was because he didn't have a name. And then so it was at the, I believe 50 or 60th anniversary, 60th anniversary, where we started to enlist the help of the, the Arizona foundation, like, help us find this guy. Like there has to be a record somewhere, right? And there was, there was a single audio recording of Joe in the 1970s to a Texas state university. And it's about maybe 10 seconds long where he, he's talking about how he saved six lives off the Arizona. And that was, that was it. We had a name for the first time in our lives. He was no longer just the guy that saved our grandfather's life. It was Joe George.
- [68:08]
Mike Rowe
So when do you feel personally like you because it feels like you're on a mission or became. What's the right word? Convicted at some point to tell this story and to just wrap yourself in the past of it, maybe to keep it present for the rest of us?
- [68:25]
Nikki Stratton
That's a good question. I think that a lot of times, you know, whenever we would go out with my grandfather and people would realize who he was, he kind of became like the Beatles whenever traveling with him, especially for military related events, because people would just gravitate towards him. I think we realized as a family that whenever he passes away, because we knew that obviously he was getting up there in age as well as all of the survivors of the Arizona, that when those guys passed away, that was it. There was nobody else to tell the story. If they go. So it was placed upon our shoulders then and it was put upon our hearts to say, okay, it's our job now to take this story, to share it where we go to speak about it to other people, so that first of all it stays present in everybody's minds. And also to remind people what happens when, you know, we forget our own history and we become complacent as a country. I think that's probably the biggest thing, is that you don't want history repeating itself. Obviously we saw what happened on September 11th where we were attacked again, you know, virtually very similar circumstances. And you would think as a country we would learn, you would hope that we would learn but for me, it became very personal because my grandfather's life means something. It meant something. And the sailors that he served with meant something to me and to this country. I'm always of the feeling that if we stop talking about it, then their memory just fades. There's no more of them once we stop talking about it. But every time I talk about Harle and every time I talk about Joe, their memory is perpetuated for another generation where somebody will remember them. And it just keeps going.
- [69:58]
Mike Rowe
In a way, you're a custodian not just of the facts, but of, well, of gallantry. In fact, all the Gallant Men is the name of the book.
- [70:09]
Nikki Stratton
Why all the Gallant Men is in memory of all the Gallant Men is written on the memorial wall at the USS Arizona Memorial. And so this is in memory of all of them.
- [70:19]
Mike Rowe
What does the word mean to you? Gallant?
- [70:23]
Nikki Stratton
I don't know if I can put it into words, but whenever I heard hear the name Gallen, I always see Joe George's face. And that's because he didn't have to do what he had to do. He knew that if he followed his commanding officer's orders they may have forgiven him for what he did the night before. But he chose. He chose a different path. He chose to save six men lives. And he knew that his career in the Navy was probably over. But there was nothing on this God's earth that could stop him from doing that. And to me, when I hear the term gallant, that's what it means to me. That's. I see his face.
- [71:02]
Mike Rowe
Your pop says something about it in here. He buries it like he does a couple of other big points. It's one of a thousand things I marked. I'm not going to go hunting for it. But he says, and this is the difference between brave men and gallant men. Brave men do the hard thing when the chips are down. Gallant men volunteer to do it again. Knowing. Right?
- [71:33]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [71:34]
Mike Rowe
Knowing it's running into the fire after you've been burned.
- [71:39]
Nikki Stratton
After you've been burned.
- [71:40]
Mike Rowe
Your old man went back to fight.
- [71:43]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [71:45]
Mike Rowe
He's on the Arizona. And he's on. I forget the name of the. Was it the stack?
- [71:50]
Nikki Stratton
USS stack. Yes.
- [71:52]
Mike Rowe
@ Okinawa.
- [71:53]
Nikki Stratton
Okinawa, Iwo Jima. Leyte. Golf.
- [71:58]
Mike Rowe
I got to talk about your position as a sponsor. It's such an odd title. And now a word from our sponsor. It's Nikki Strange. But I'm just. I'm sorry I'm hopscotching around, but I don't want to forget. I'm at the part in the Book now where your pop talks about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and he very even handedly, I think, talks about the controversies and we've done it on this podcast before, I don't want to belabor it, but walks through the projections and the statistics and he makes this statistical case. He makes the numerical case. He talks about 10 million Japanese deaths and probably 800,000 thousand dead Americans. If we invade. It just becomes very mathematical and practical. And I'm like, yeah, I've heard that argument. And that makes sense. And then again, in another little parenthetically short sentence, he says, and you know something, we dropped leaflets.
- [72:56]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [72:57]
Mike Rowe
And then he publishes, he writes the exact leaflets that were dropped. They're incredibly detailed and persuaded. And then the final sentence of that chapter is, we didn't get any leaflets on December 7th.
- [73:14]
Chuck
I'm like, yeah, I know, that knocked me out too.
- [73:18]
Mike Rowe
I mean, what can you. Right? So it's just bravo all around, all the gallant men. But flashing further forward now, here you are, his granddaughter. And the Arizona lives again in the form of. I think you brought some visual aids. Let's have a look.
- [73:38]
Nikki Stratton
Before we do that, did you want to see the.
- [73:41]
Mike Rowe
I want to see all of it. I want to see the thing wrapped in the towel.
- [73:45]
Nikki Stratton
Yes. So before I move on to the submarine, I do want to show you guys this. So I've got two pieces of Battleship Arizona here. The first one is pretty significant. So this is actually a piece of the armor plating that was basically surrounding the Arizona. So that's probably about a five by five piece. And you can tell by its weight it's pretty heavy. Right. So cast iron, pretty much. And so that armor plating was meant to protect the Arizona from armament and obviously direct hits. And we kind of know what happened to the Arizona when a bomb hits the teakwood deck and goes down many decks. But you know, the armor plating was pretty technologically advanced at the time. It was meant to kind of deflect any type of larger armor, but it also added some significant weight to the Arizona. So I think that they. I think she was like 25 and a half thousand tons. I think.
- [74:37]
Mike Rowe
25,000? Yeah.
- [74:39]
Nikki Stratton
Just around that.
- [74:40]
Mike Rowe
Well, that's heavy.
- [74:41]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [74:42]
Mike Rowe
Wow.
- [74:42]
Nikki Stratton
Yep. So, and then I also brought a smaller piece of steel, which to me, I know that the armor plating is significant, but this is probably my favorite. And that's because you can actually see the delamination of the steel. So when steel's made, it's made in layers, but when it gets hot again, it actually. What's called Delaminates. And so you can actually see the individual layers of steel that created the battleship Arizona. And basically this shows you how hot the battleship burned because you can see the individual layers on there. So that was very close to my grandfather's battle station right there. That piece is in Waipo. The main superstructure is in Waipo Island. It's like a little inlet, so just rest in a way.
- [75:26]
Chuck
Amazing.
- [75:27]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. Truly.
- [75:28]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah.
- [75:29]
Mike Rowe
All right.
- [75:32]
Nikki Stratton
Oh, I also want to show you guys this. So this is actually so cool. So right. So the Pacific historic parks where the USS Arizona memorial is back in I think the 90s, maybe early 2000, I think the 90s decided that they wanted to do an Americans of Valor series. And so they started with my grandfather. He is the first and only crewman of the USS Arizona or of any battleship to be created into his own action figure. And I really want to stress this enough. It is not a doll. My grandfather made it very clear that it was not a doll.
- [76:08]
Mike Rowe
I'm just thinking, what, what would Joe.
- [76:10]
Nikki Stratton
George think about this? Yes. So basically what it is, it's my grandfather as a 19 year old sailor. It has a story on the side. They actually did a Rosie the Riveter one as well, but his was the actual only sailor that they ever did.
- [76:26]
Chuck
Did he sign it on the back?
- [76:27]
Nikki Stratton
He did.
- [76:28]
Chuck
So that's his actual signature?
- [76:29]
Nikki Stratton
That's his actual signature, yeah. So they did a run of them. You can still find them on ebay every once in a while, which was super fun.
- [76:36]
Mike Rowe
How many did they make?
- [76:38]
Nikki Stratton
Oh, gosh. I want to say probably. I want to say maybe like 5 to 10,000 of them. They sold out every time we went to Hawaii. They were always sold out. We actually talked to a couple companies and they're like, we want to do. If the movie ever gets done, they want to do another. Another series of these, which would be super amazing, super cool.
- [76:56]
Mike Rowe
That would be awesome.
- [76:58]
Nikki Stratton
All right, now for the cool thing, the next gen thing. So this is a model of the future USS Arizona nuclear submarine which was named in 2019 by Secretary Thomas Motley.
- [77:12]
Chuck
Nice. Just to go back. I did look it up. SSN stands for Submersible Ship Nuclear.
- [77:18]
Nikki Stratton
Submersible Ship Nuclear. I should know that I'm probably going to get a lot of hate.
- [77:22]
Mike Rowe
Well, you are the sponsor. If nothing else, you can take that from this conversation.
- [77:26]
Chuck
And one other thing for you. Unbroken was written by the guy who was in. You know, his story was Louis Zamperini.
- [77:32]
Mike Rowe
Zamperini, not Lamperin.
- [77:33]
Nikki Stratton
Right.
- [77:34]
Mike Rowe
Thank you all right, good. So this is. What is this Virginia class? Columbia.
- [77:38]
Nikki Stratton
It is a Virginia class, but it's actually a new gen model. So it is the Virginia class with the vpm.
- [77:43]
Mike Rowe
Okay. What does the average person need to know about this weapon and submarines in general that they don't?
- [77:53]
Nikki Stratton
Well, right now, submarines are absolutely crucial to our Navy or to our United States, just overall safety. They patrol the waters. So pretty much the Navy has stated outright that basically a SEAL team or a United States Navy team can be on site to any particular area in the entire world and on the entire globe within 24 hours. And a lot of that has to do with our submersible fleet. I would say what makes the Arizona unique is it is a new generation model. So it has what's called the VPM module. It's an additional 83ft to the current Virginia class. It has four vertical tubes that are basically placed inside of the submarine itself. I want to say it's kind of like, it's not really open use, but there are so many uses for those. So they can actually store additional Tomahawk missiles. So it triples the lethality of the current virgin Virginia class. They can actually flood those tubes as well and launch Navy SEALs out of them. So they actually don't have to surface where currently they do. Which I'm not going to lie, when it's kind of done, I kind of want to try it. I kind of want to have them. I want to don some scuba gear and have them shoot me out of the VPM tube.
- [78:59]
Mike Rowe
So it's a way to work on that for sure.
- [79:02]
Nikki Stratton
You know, I'm a sponsor. I can do what I want. Right? That's good. But what it basically does is it gives our Navy another weapon against some of our rising enemies and rising aggressions, especially over in China. She will most likely be positioned in Pearl harbor when she's completed. So right close to China and some of those other places. But obviously I want her to be stationed in Pearl Harbor. It makes sense not only from a historical standpoint, but from a, you know, tactical standpoint as well.
- [79:30]
Mike Rowe
So how did you come to be like, this is a phone call. Do you get a telegram? You got a. How's that work?
- [79:38]
Nikki Stratton
So typically, what would happen in every other normal case, the Secretary of the Navy would reach out via either phone call or via email. A lot of times they have personal relationships with sponsors where they have a specific person in mind. And basically what it is is there's a single female sponsor per United States vessel. First of all, let's start with the naming. So the USS Arizona was named in December of 2019 by Secretary Thomas. My grandfather passed away in February of 2020, so just a couple months after it was named. And, you know, I actually got to know Secretary Tom Modley when he was the undersecretary. He had the USS Vestal Bell in his office.
- [80:19]
Mike Rowe
Oh, wow.
- [80:19]
Nikki Stratton
And he had a picture of my grandfather above it. The reason he did that is he said every time I walk by, he's like, I want to remember what we're fighting for and I want to remember what our men did so that we don't repeat it. So him and I got to know each other through email very well. And when my grandfather passed away, we ended up inviting him to attend the funeral. He ended up speaking at my grandfather's funeral, which was absolutely incredible. And then he pulled me aside and said, nikki, I have something I want to speak with you about. And so we ended up going into a small room at the church. And he said, now I know you know about sponsorships and being a sponsor of a vessel. And I said, yes, I'm familiar with the practice. And he said, well, I want you to be the sponsor of the Arizona. And he's like, I can't in good conscience just name anybody. He's like, this is such a unique piece of our history. He's like, there has to be a familial connection with this ship because of the 15, 11 crew members. And we knew that they would probably not make it until the. At that point, I think there was two left, that they would not make it until the commissioning of the submarine. But he said he really wanted to make sure that there was always a familial connection, a direct descendant with the original Battleship Arizona to this new generation.
- [81:30]
Mike Rowe
What are your duties?
- [81:32]
Nikki Stratton
That's a fun question. So there's ceremonial duties and then there's actual duties. And for the most part, a sponsor can be as involved as she wants with her crew and with the ship. For me, I'm very involved.
- [81:45]
Mike Rowe
Do tell.
- [81:46]
Nikki Stratton
I'm sure you probably guessed that, but kind of. The very first milestone of sponsorship is called the Keelun. And that basically marks the very first construction piece. And nine times out of ten for a non submersible vessel, obviously there's the keel, which is the backbone of a vessel. So what happens is a welder, the sponsor will first write her initials into a plate, and then a welder will weld her initials into the keel plate, and then they will affix it on the keel itself inside of the vessel. For me, being the, you know, extra girl, I am decided with the blessing of Electric Boat, to weld my own initial. And so my husband and I ended up learning to weld in Denver, and we ended up laying our keel plate down December 7th of 2022. So on the anniversary I got up there, I donned my amazing Rosie the Riveter gear. It was probably the most comfortable I have ever been at an event. I didn't have to wear a dress. I didn't have to wear heels. I was in a jumpsuit. I had gloves on. And I welded my own initial into the plate. And then we had the welder finish it. Because it's actually a really huge honor to be chosen as a welder. Welder for a keeling ceremony. And so I did not want to take that away from a welder. And so we ended up having an electric boat welder who had been with the company for almost 40 years, I believe. And he started when he had just gotten out of high school. He had done a number of other boats, and they actually gave him the opportunity to weld on the USS Illinois. So Michelle Obama's vessel. But he's like, no, give it to someone younger. Like, it's good for them to do that. And they came back and said, well, we have USS Arizona. You know, we want to give you that opportunity. And he's like, I'm not passing that up. So he made sure that he was on the USS Arizona.
- [83:31]
Mike Rowe
So what do you do in real life?
- [83:34]
Nikki Stratton
I do want to show this. That is my welding helmet. I wore that when I welded my initials. And thankfully, Lincoln Electric heard about me and my story, and they're like, well, we don't want you to just wear any helmet. Like, you have to have a badass helmet. And so I was like, yeah, let's go for it. And so they ended up. They're like, well, we have two. Two, like, US Flag helmets. One was a little bit more modern, like a more modern flag. And they said, this one has a little bit more of an older feel. I was like, I want that one because it had that. It just has that, like, cool 1940s vibe to it. And then you can see the signatures around. So a lot of those were the people on stage with me. So you have Admiral Lindsay Yancey Lindsey. So he was one of our admirals on there. The president of Electric Boat was on there. Our welder is on there. And so just as a very good memory of.
- [84:25]
Mike Rowe
That's pretty great.
- [84:26]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah. When I go around and speak around the different places. You know, I'm very blessed to be able to tell this story. I bring the helmet with me, especially to the younger kids. And, you know, when I was down in Gilbert, Arizona, which is a host town for the submarine, they actually watched me welding. And a lot of the girls when I came back, I think three or four months later, they're like, you're the welder girl. You make me want to weld when I'm older. So for me, it's really cool because it's like they associate that. That with like, oh, a girl can do that. Like, yeah, let's go.
- [84:55]
Mike Rowe
Yeah. Well, you may be the sponsor for more than the Arizona.
- [84:59]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [84:59]
Mike Rowe
Really.
- [85:00]
Nikki Stratton
So to continue that. So the next ceremony thing that we have is the. Will be the christening. And that means that I get to smack a bottle over the nose of the sub. And for me, it will be unique, as always, because originally the original battleship was christened with two bottles. So the first was water that had been collected from the Roosevelt Dam. So it was the very first damage that was built in Arizona. Arizona was also a dry state at the time, and so they did not want their first battleship to be christened with alcohol. And then the second was the traditional champagne. For me, it's the first bottle is going to be root beer. And a lot of that is because the guys, they were the survivors of Arizona, drank root beer when they were recovering because it settled their stomach with all the medication and all of that. There's actually a local brewery in Gilbert, Arizona, that brews their own root beer. And so they're going to make the bottle for us, and then we're going to smash that over. And then the second will be the traditional champagne. We're honoring the past and then obviously forging and creating a new future. And then the last ceremonial event will be the commissioning, which is basically where I will call the ship to life and say, you know, sailors, man your posts and call the ship to life. And as I say that, the submariners are going to run out onto the sub, man their stations, and then basically from that second on, it is an active service vessel in the United States Navy.
- [86:17]
Mike Rowe
Do we have a date?
- [86:19]
Nikki Stratton
We're hoping late 27, early 28.
- [86:24]
Mike Rowe
You know, I wonder if this is one of the ships that Blue Forge Alliance. Have you heard of these guys?
- [86:31]
Nikki Stratton
I believe so.
- [86:32]
Mike Rowe
The American submarine industrial base is this huge assortment of 15,000 companies. They're trying to hire 100,000 trades people over the next eight, nine years to build four of these things. And it's just so interesting that you mentioned welding. We're constantly beating that drum here. The shortages are so real. And I worry just not just about the Navy, but the overall workforce and skilled labor. And it just seems we're so out of balance. And the opportunities that exist, they're everywhere. The fact you're sitting here with actually the submarine, one of the ones in question, that's crazy.
- [87:09]
Nikki Stratton
Yes.
- [87:09]
Mike Rowe
I love it. Anything else you want people to know that they don't? Aside from the fact that all the Gallant Men is a book that every American ought to read?
- [87:19]
Nikki Stratton
Well, I guess, and you can put this anywhere, but I will say that my grandfather always left with some of the best advice, and it's advice that I take with me through every bit and piece of my life. You know, he said this to former President Trump in the open. He said this to Mad Dog Mattis in the Pentagon and a few other folks. And that is, don't do anything you can't do standing up in a hammock.
- [87:46]
Chuck
Wait a minute. What?
- [87:48]
Mike Rowe
Don't do anything you can't do standing up in a hammock.
- [87:51]
Nikki Stratton
Correct.
- [87:55]
Chuck
There's a lot. There's very little you can do standing up in a hammock.
- [87:59]
Mike Rowe
That's essentially, I think, what he's saying. Don't get over your skis.
- [88:03]
Nikki Stratton
Exactly.
- [88:04]
Mike Rowe
If you're going to do a thing, be careful.
- [88:07]
Nikki Stratton
Do it right, do it right and do it right the first time.
- [88:10]
Mike Rowe
Don't do anything you wouldn't do standing up in a hammock.
- [88:13]
Chuck
That's interesting.
- [88:13]
Mike Rowe
It's not a terrible title for this episode either, I'll tell you that. Thank you so much for the hat, the shirt.
- [88:21]
Nikki Stratton
You're so welcome.
- [88:22]
Mike Rowe
Mostly for the time. And also, you know, what, for keeping grandfathers relevant. Yeah, that's probably a good place to end this. We just read so much and hear so much about, you know, the importance of the family unit. Obviously it's only critically important, but the role of grandfathers and the impact yours had on you.
- [88:42]
Nikki Stratton
Yeah, hugely important. Not only just who he was as a person, but how he lived his life after. Obviously, I didn't know him when he was younger, but I mean, to go through what he did and to experience what he did, he had the best attitude. He was always laughing, he was always joking. He enjoyed his life. He was an offshore. He worked on the oil rigs when he was retired. And, you know, he at one point had the deepest dive in a two man submarine. He was just a genuine person and he lived his life to the fullest. And I think that that's something that we all should strive towards is just living our life to the fullest. No matter what adversities come at us or what life may throw at us, just understanding that that's part of what makes us who we are. But living our life to the fullest.
- [89:27]
Mike Rowe
Well, he's the epitome of the greatest generation and you are indeed proof of it.
- [89:33]
Nikki Stratton
Thank you very much.
- [89:33]
Mike Rowe
Thanks again for coming.
- [89:34]
Nikki Stratton
Thank you so much. This is wonderful.
- [89:36]
Mike Rowe
This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but.
- [89:45]
Chuck
If it made you smile.
- [89:49]
Nikki Stratton
Then share.
- [89:51]
Mike Rowe
Your satisfaction in the way that people do Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world the advertisers really like to jump. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you got to do is leave a quick five star review. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. Definitely not to all you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate five star.
- [90:40]
Chuck
Especially if you hate.
- [90:44]
Mike Rowe
Thank you.
- [90:50]
Nikki Stratton
Now.
- [90:50]
Mike Rowe
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Nikki Stratton
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Mike Rowe
For well qualified customers.
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Nikki Stratton
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Mike Rowe
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Nikki Stratton
Balance on a required finance agreement due Bill credits end if you pay off devices early.
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Unknown
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