KUYKENDALL-CLIFFORD

ONLY  SURVIVOR  OF  USS  TULLIBEE  SINKING

Excerpts from article published in “THE PERISCOPE,” monthly publication of Los Angeles U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc. – November 2014:

The last thing Clifford Kuykendall remembers hearing before the explosion was a crewmate saying, “Well, there they go.  We’ll see what happens now.”  About 35-seconds later there was an explosion.  When Kuykendall came to – possibly a few minutes later, he’s not sure – he watched helplessly as his submarine, USS TULLIBEE, slowly sank into the Pacific and out of sight.  Kuykendall was a 19-year old submariner in the early hours of March 26, 1944, when TULLIBEE launched two torpedoes meant for a Japanese transport.  Instead, the torpedoes ran a circular route and struck the submarine.  He was the lone survivor of a crew of 80. 

“The concussion was terrific.  I was on lookout and it was a real dark night, drizzling,” he recalled.    “I was blown into the air and when I came to, I was submerged in the ocean.  I fought my way to the surface.  I had swallowed so much water that I could taste salt and diesel fuel for at least a year after that,” Kuykendall said.  He floated for several hours alone, except for an empty Sunkist orange crate that bumped into him.

Kuykendall credited his shipmate, EM1 Louis Joseph Hieronimus, for saving his life.  Hieronimus had forced him to take a lifebelt before going on lookout.  The partially inflated lifebelt kept him afloat long enough to be spotted.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t American.  About 10 a.m. he saw a destroyer coming flying the rising sun flag.  “They made a circle around me and opened up with a machine gun, firing at me,” he said.  “Fortunately, they never got a lethal shot in, but bullets were flying all over the place.” The Japanese brought him aboard, pulling him up with a net because he was too weak to climb aboard.  That’s when he had his third brush with death in less than 24 hours.  A Japanese officer, holding a sword, called him a coward for not drowning himself rather than being captured.  The officer swung the sword over Kuykendall’s head four times, missing each time.  “Each time he swung it -- there were two Japanese sailors on either side of me holding me up -- I collapsed and fell to the deck and the sword passed over my head,” he said.  “I did that intentionally because I knew if that sword hit my neck it would chop my head off.”  A short time later, Kuykendall heard something in Japanese over the PA system and the harassment stopped -- for the time being.  He was dragged into a deck house and tossed onto a mat.  “Another Japanese sailor came in and he was carrying a small cup of sweet tea in his hand,” he said.  “He lifted my head and was giving me this sweet tea.  He said in English, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be all right.’” 

He was taken to a small seaplane base among the Palau Islands and tied to a tree atop a hill while Americans bombed the island as part of Operation Desecrate.  After three days of abuse tied to the tree, he was put into a foxhole behind a Japanese navy commander’s home.  “Two days later, the owner of the house came up and got me and they took me to the dock.  He could speak English.  He saved my life. I know he did. They would have killed me if it hadn’t been for him,” Kuykendall said, reenacting several captors punching him while he was tied up.  “He took me out on the dock.  A Japanese navy plane landed and he told me, ‘There you go. Good luck.’  Just like that.  I looked at him and said, ‘Sir, good luck to you. I hope you make it.’  He said, ‘I’ll need it.’”

The next 17 months or so, Kuykendall bounced among labor camps until World War II ended. His final days as a captive, he worked in a copper mine in Ashio.  He recalled food rations increasing and American planes flying overhead.  “They were sending out fighters to locate all of the prison camps so they could drop them food because they knew we were probably starving,” he said.

When he returned to Texas, Kuykendall would stare at the ceiling at night and try to figure out how he survived so many brushes with death. “I’d say, ‘How did this happen?’ That went on for a couple of months, ‘Why little ole me?’ I suddenly realized that if I kept doing that I’d just worry myself to death. I had to stop.  To this very day, like I have told many people, I’m just lucky.”

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)