Pearl Harbor survivor’s legacy is shared by daughter through letters

An Arizona woman has been living her life fulfilling the promise to her dad, never letting people forget Pearl Harbor. Carol Reiley, daughter of Pearl Harbor survivor John Birmingham who was aboard the USS Vestal at the time of the attack, continues to share her father’s story of watching the bombs rain down.

Reiley wanted to uphold a promise she made to her father the night before he died, to never let people forget about Pearl Harbor. She has the original note and envelope her father wrote to her grandma the day after the bombing, which is postmarked Dec. 9, 1941 , a treasure she will never forget. Reiley joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk more about her father’s story.

“There really are not that many; I am a member of the sons and daughters of Pearl Harbor survivors,” Reiley said, “But we’re getting up there too. There isn’t a big group to keep this memory alive.”

Her father was born in 1918 in Springfield, IL, and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. He joined the Navy in 1938 and was soon assigned to the USS Vestal, which was a repair ship, where he was a signalman.

Birmingham had a friend aboard the USS Arizona ship who was a baker, whom he would frequently see. The friend told Birmingham to return in the morning for kitchen utensils. That friend was in the galley when the bombing occurred, and he did not survive.

“It was very frightening, he said. He was up on the bridge,” Reiley explained, “He had just mentioned to his shipmate who was up there with him that the PBY planes, which were security planes, had not flown over the island to check on things.”

PBY is a military code where PB stands for Patrol Bomber and Y is the identifier for its maker, in this case Consolidated Aircraft. The plane was meant to be a long-range scouting aircraft to help protect the island and ships.

“He heard planes coming,” Reiley said, “As they got closer, he realized how low they were flying, and he said literally they were so low that he could see the faces of the pilots, and he would see the red meatball underneath the wing.”