By: Bill Freyburg, P-N Staff Writer
December 5, 2024
This article was originally published 30 years ago in 1994. The story of Rinesmith’s stint in the Navy during World War II is interesting, especially as so few people are alive today who lived through that time.
Jim Rinesmith of Culver served on three U.S. destroyers during a 20-year career as a torpedoman in the U.S. Navy. He was blown off the side of one of them, thanks to a kamikaze. The bow of another was practically sheared off by a destroyer in the U.S. fleet and from a third, Rinesmith loaded shells into a five-inch gun, firing at Japanese planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
By now, not as much is made of “Pearl Harbor Day” – December 7, 1941. The 53rd anniversary of the “day that will live in infamy” in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, passed rather quietly this week.
But Rinesmith remembers it vividly. He was a 23-year-old and serving aboard the USS Bagley at Berth 22, across Pearl Harbor from “Battleship Row,” that Sunday morning in the Hawaiian Islands. The Bagley was in for repairs of a keel; it was receiving electricity, steam and fresh water from the dock.
Rinesmith had finished breakfast in the mess hall and was going back to his bunk when he looked out a porthole and saw an airplane strafing the area and dropping a torpedo. “I woke the guys up in the bunks and shouted, ‘There’s a war going on!’,” Rinesmith said in an interview from his home at 423 State St. this week.
“I saw the Oklahoma get hit. We started firing. I was on the five-inch gun, loading shells. I don’t know if we hit anything, but the ship got credit for five torpedo bombers.” The attack came in at 7:50 Honolulu time, and it ushered the United States into World War II.
It took a little over an hour for the Bagley to build up its own steam and get underway. She was not damaged. The crew was relieved to find the Pacific Ocean free of Japanese war ships once the ship cleared the harbor.
During the next 18 months that Rinesmith was aboard, the Bagley provided cover screening for larger ships and participated in a number of big operations including the American landings at Tulagi and at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
“We never got a scratch in all that time,” despite numerous battle actions, the Culver man said. One of those came in February 1942 as the Bagley helped escort two convoys on their way from the Panama Canal into the Southwest Pacific.
After a foray against the enemy stronghold of Rabaul was aborted when the U.S. task force was discovered, Japanese planes attacked the Americans. The Bagley fired away and as she did so, crew members including Rinesmith watched as one daring U.S. fighter pilot darted about the sky shooting at and hitting the attackers.
He was Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare, and he downed five enemy bombers in four minutes of action, becoming the first U.S. Ace of the war and winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. O’Hare International Airport is named for him.
Rinesmith left the Bagley on May 31, 1943, to attend torpedo schooling in the States. He had served on the ship since October 20, 1940. During part of that period, his brother was also a torpedoman on the ship. Robert D. Rinesmith was a member of the original crew when the Bagley was commissioned in 1937 and served until October 13, 1941. “He left just in time,” said the 76-year -old Jim of his 78-year-old brother, who lives in Phoenix.
In Septembr1943, Rinesmith was assigned to the USS Haraden, another of the hundreds of sleek, fast destroyers that protected larger ships and hunted submarines. He was a crew member until 1946 when the ship was decommissioned. The Haraden saw considerable action, including island landings in the Marshall and Gilbert islands in the Pacific. She wasn’t as lucky as the Bagley. On Friday, the 13th of December, 1944, the Haraden was in a task force that came under attack in the Marshalls. Rinesmith was at his battle station in the No. 1 torpedo mount when a Japanese plane came through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire heading straight for the ship. “We were one of the first ships in the war to be hit by a kamikaze (suicide plane),” said Rinesmith.
The wing of the plane swept the starboard side of the Haraden, and the body of the plane plunged into a smokestack near Rinesmith. “The chief (torpedoman) on the other side of the mount was killed,” Rinesmith said. “I was blown over the side into the water. I looked around for another ship, and there came an aircraft carrier right at me.”
“At the last minute, she did a hard right and threw a lift raft, but I couldn’t get to it. There was a kid with me. We looked around for sharks, but didn’t see any, but we had seen sharks before the battle. We were in the water for about an hour when another destroyer picked us up. We found out later that 14 were killed, and 67 were wounded on the Haraden.”
Rinesmith was hit by some shrapnel and had minor burns. He spent Christmas of 1944 in a Navy hospital on Manus Island, got out on December 26 and rejoined the Haraden. The ship was repaired at Bremerton Navy Yard in Washington state and served out the war in the Pacific.
After the Haraden was decommissioned, Rinesmith was assigned to his third destroyer, the USS Higbee. He said the ship was the only one at the time named for a female, Lena Higbee, a Navy nurse.
It was peacetime, but Rinesmith’s adventures weren’t quite over. The Higbee was bound for China in 1946 when another destroyer cut across her bow. “Three days later, the bow fell off, and we backed 900 miles to Pearl,” he said.
Rinesmith has the Navy to thank for his marriage. He met his wife of 51 years when he was attending torpedo school in Newport, RI, in 1941. She was a civilian payroll clerk there. They corresponded after he returned to ship duty. When he was sent to Newport for more schooling in 1943, he popped the question, and she gave the right answer. They were married on September 14, 1943, with a crewmate as his best man.
Rinesmith attended the reunion of the Haraden in Twin Mountain, ME, last July (1993). Forty-three men of the 325-man crew were there. He says he recognized only two or three of them at first look but remembered many of them by name.
The Marshall County Historical Society & Museum’s volunteers work to preserve articles such as these about local people. Our archives are full of fascinating stories like this one. We are open from 10:00 until 4:00, Tuesday through Saturday, at 123 N. Michigan St., Plymouth. Call us at 574-936-2306. Stop in anytime.