Hilliard Elliott – Pearl Harbor Survivor Still Going Strong at 89

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – As members of America’s “Greatest Generation” decline by triple-digit numbers each day, they leave behind a legacy of heroism, leadership and prosperity that is unmatched in our history.

Elliott was given a parting “Happy Birthday” kiss by CMP staff members and volunteers as he exited the 17 October awards ceremony at Ben Avery Shooting Facility.

One member of that fraternity, Hilliard “Curly” Elliott, of Granada Hills, California continues to defy the effects of aging. In fact, he spent his 89th birthday at the CMP Western Games on 17 October, shooting in rifle matches and hanging out with his shooting buddies at the Ben Avery Shooting Facility. It’s something he has done for the past seven years.

A U.S. Navy veteran and survivor of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Elliott hasn’t missed the CMP event since its inception at Camp Pendleton, California in 2004. This year he fired the Rimfire Sporter Match on his birthday and dined with fellow shooters at CMP’s barbecue dinner and awards ceremony. Later he entered and competed in a three-position M1 Garand match.

Hilliard Elliott received a gold achievement medal from Gary Anderson, Director of Civilian Marksmanship Emeritus at the 2010 CMP Western Games Rimfire Sporter awards ceremony for his service to his country and support of CMP events.

As a tribute to his patriotism and dedication to shooting sports, Director of Civilian Marksmanship Emeritus, Gary Anderson, kicked off the Rimfire Sporter awards ceremony by presenting Elliott a gold achievement medal, thanked him for his military service and support of the CMP Western Games and wished him a happy birthday.

A roomful of rifle competitors, sportsmen and friends sprang to their feet in ovation for Elliott - a tribute to a man who defied the odds as a World War II Naval combat veteran and a 26-year member of the Los Angeles police department. He was one of four brothers to serve in the Armed Forces in World War II.

A survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack and the Battle of Coral Sea, Elliott miraculously dodged the strafing and bombing of Battleship Row along Ford Island.

The USS Lexington CV-2 is under power on a calm day off the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

Assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) as an aviation mechanic, Hilliard was not on the carrier on 7 December, 1941 as it shuttled Marine Corps scout planes to Midway Island. His duties had him working in a shop on Ford Island repairing an aircraft. He said on the morning of the attack he had just left his barracks after getting dressed to go downtown when the sky filled with Japanese fighters and torpedo bombers.

The USS Oklahoma after taking at least two Japanese torpedoes during the raid on Pearl Harbor, 7 December, 1941.

“I was less than 100 yards away from the Oklahoma when she exploded,” he said. After taking three torpedo strikes and an aerial bombardment, the battleship USS Oklahoma rolled over until her masts came to rest on the bottom of the channel, taking the lives of 429 sailors. Elliott said he immediately manned fire-fighting equipment and did the best he could to help get things back under control.

“We didn’t have damage control teams prepared for that sort of thing back then,” Elliott said. “We were trained to do whatever we could to help.”

Fortunately for the U.S. Pacific fleet, the Lexington and the Navy’s two other Honolulu-based aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga were at sea at the time of the attack.

Hilliard Elliott’s aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington CV-2, on fire during the Battle of Coral Sea, May 1942.

Five months later the Lexington was pounded by Japanese aircraft during the Battle of Coral Sea. Crewmen doused flames and kept the carrier afloat but a subsequent gasoline fire was too intense to control. The Lexington was so severely damaged it was successfully abandoned and eventually torpedoed by the destroyer USS Phelps so it couldn’t fall into enemy hands.

Survivors of the sinking of the USS Lexington are pulled aboard a rescue ship during the Battle of Coral Sea, May 1942.

One of two carriers in its class along with the Saratoga, the Lexington was one of five U.S. Navy vessels that bore the name of the Massachusetts town famous for the first uprising against the British in the Revolutionary War. The ship was originally designed as a battle cruiser but was converted to a carrier during its construction.

Elliott graduated high school in 1940 and joined the Navy the following year. On the carrier deck one of his first jobs was to unhook the arresting cables from landing aircrafts. He attended the Navy’s machinist school in Chicago and became and Machinist Mate (Advanced).

"I really enjoyed being a mechanic. I liked working with my hands” Elliott said.

He remembers spending his 21st birthday during a Navy cruise in the port of Hamilton, Bermuda on his way to the Mediterranean Sea where the U.S. helped knock out the German fuel transport for Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

In 1946 Elliott joined the Los Angeles Police Department and retired from the department in 1972. He said his grandfather William Elliott was the first police officer to be killed in the line of duty in Tucson, Arizona in 1892.

“Our families have always done very well for themselves,” Elliott said. “We learned to do the best we could with what we had,” he explained.

He described how his family built a house out of scrap lumber from old railcars when he was young. “As kids we built a house with used lumber and set up a homemade milling operation in the yard. We ripped our own framing materials…made our own two-by-fours…we were lucky none of us lost a hand!”

Elliott has been married to his wife Charlene, 80, for 63 years and they have three children. He described his wife’s successful battle against cancer, surviving a life-saving catastrophic surgery. “She’s still got health issues but we’re working through it,” he said.

Hilliard Elliott, second from left, is flanked by fellow members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association at a 2009 reunion.

He is a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association which has a membership of about 3,000 veterans. He was also the last president of the USS Lexington CV-2 Minutemen Club, an organization dedicated to those who served on his ship. The association was recently disbanded due to the sheer difficulty of getting members together Elliott said.

USS Lexington survivor Hilliard Elliott, right, and Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Australia Campbell Newman listen as former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, addresses the audience during the 65th Commemoration of the Battle of Coral Sea in 2007.

Some of his fondest memories are of reunions with his former shipmates and the people of Australia who still commemorate the participation of U.S. forces who helped defend their continent from invasion by the Japanese. The Battle of Coral Sea was a pivotal American-Australian alliance which stunted the Japanese advance toward Australia. It was the first all-carrier naval battle where neither side fired directly upon the other’s ships.

“The Australians embrace U.S. sailors to this day,” Elliott said. “They love us. Every time we go there; whenever they see us, they thank us for our involvement in the defense of their homeland,” he said.

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