Seaman First Class Charles
”
Chuck
”
Verbanic was washing the bulkheads of the USS Tennessee, a U.S.
Navy battleship moored at Pearl Harbor, early in the morning on
December 7th, 1941. He spent many mornings in exactly the same way;
life in the Navy, he said, entailed a lot of washing and
painting.
Hollister – Seaman First Class Charles “Chuck” Verbanic was washing the bulkheads of the USS Tennessee, a U.S. Navy battleship moored at Pearl Harbor, early in the morning on December 7th, 1941. He spent many mornings in exactly the same way; life in the Navy, he said, entailed a lot of washing and painting.
“Man your battle stations, this is no drill,” he remembers hearing over the loudspeaker. Verbanic didn’t get a chance to do much washing that day.
Today Verbanic, 86, lives in Hollister with his wife Antoinette. He believes he survived the attack on Pearl Harbor by the grace of God alone, and his experiences in World War II make him one of San Benito County’s real treasures.
Verbanic was born in Pennsylvania but moved to Ohio at a very young age. As a teenager, he spent two years with the Civilian Conservation Corps, but grew bored and wanted more out of life. In 1939, he made a six-year commitment to the Navy when he was just 17, lying about his age in order to enlist.
“I’m real glad I signed up with the Navy,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d have been drafted into the Army and who knows what would have happened?”
Verbanic became a sailor on the USS Tennessee, which boasted a crew of 4,000 men.
“It was like a little city, with a barber shop and a soda parlor,” he said. “Later in the war, Marines would see us eating ice cream and trade us Japanese swords for a sundae.”
The USS Tennessee spent quite a bit of time at Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attack, tied between two other ships on “Battleship Row,” the USS Arizona and the USS Ohio. It’s this fortunate position that helped saved Verbanic’s life on the morning of the attack.
“On Pearl Harbor Day, we were too scared to think,” he said. “And there wasn’t anything we could do to stop the attack. It was Sunday, so all the ammunition was locked in the supply rooms.”
While the Arizona and Ohio took serious damage from aircraft fire and torpedoes, Verbanic says the smoke from neighboring explosions concealed the Tennessee and prevented the Japanese from securing any real targets on his ship.
“Oil was burning everywhere,” he said. “We were scared of burning up. But we were so scared, we were three times as strong as usual.”
By the time Verbanic and his shipmates were able to break into the storage rooms and find ammunition, they were unable to get to the towers where the heavy guns were situated on the ship, and had to settle for positions at about deck level. However, Verbanic believes if he had made it any higher, he would have become an easy target for enemy fire.
“No one was stopping them, so the Japanese were flying real low,” he said. “You could see their faces. You could really see the whites of their eyes.”
Compared to other ships, the Tennessee didn’t lose too many men. Four Tennessee sailors were killed in the attack, 22 were wounded and one went missing.
“After that, nothing else ever scared me,” said Verbanic. “How do you shock someone after that?”
Verbanic spent the next two years at sea in the Philippines, and was given shore duty at the Hollister Naval Air Station, where he met “Tonie”, who worked at a cleaner’s.
“I didn’t know where Hollister was,” he said. “It was a shock. The town was smaller than the ship I’d been on.”
After Verbanic finished his service, he went to work in Salinas and married Tonie in 1949. He has yet to retire, holding a supervisor position at the Salinas Pump Company. While close friends respect his service to his country – a friend in San Juan even made him a hat commemorating his service aboard the USS Tennessee – it isn’t something he brags about; some of his own family members weren’t aware that he had served.
Verbanic and Tonie didn’t recognize Pearl Harbor Day in any special way this year, the couple says they rarely do. Instead, Verbanic says he remembers Pearl Harbor every day, whether he wants to or not.
“It was something that could only happen to you once in a lifetime, and it’s something you never forget, no matter how hard you try,” he said. “But I believe the country learned an important lesson that day, and I still think the Navy is a great experience for anyone, war or no war.”
