Puissegur recalls ‘a date that will live in infamy’

On Dec. 7, 1941, Rayne native Bill Puissegur, a 19-year-old U.S. Navy radio man aboard the USS Maryland, was planning to go to the Waikiki Beach with some friends.

There had been some concern among U.S. military leaders about the Japanese military’s advance across the Pacific Ocean but the attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor caught nearly every sailor stationed at the base off guard as it did to the entire United States. And shortly afterward, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan. 

The attack on day that Puissegur had planned to spend at the beach drew the U.S. into the greatest war possibly in the history of the Earth. 

“I was standing on the deck waiting to go to the beach when five torpedos hit the Oklahoma,” said Puissegur, who now resides in Crowley. “There must have been 700 men who were killed aboard that ship.”

In some respects Puissegur and the other sailors aboard the Maryland were lucky. Their ship was docked in the middle of several of the others, including the Oklahoma, the West Virginia, the Nevada, the Tennessee and the Arizona, which was the only battleship that suffered a total loss after being hit by four armor-piercing bombs, killing 1,177 servicemen. 

“They couldn’t hit us with their missles but two of their bombs hit our ship and killed four men,” Puissegur said. “After the attack we brought it to Birmingham, Washington, to get repaired and it returned to service in 1942.”

He recalled the image of men trying to escape from the U.S. ships and “not being able to make it.”

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war was far from over for Puissegur. Some of the battles he was involved in are engraved in American history such as Iwo Jima, the Phillipines, Okinawa. He was also involved in a convoy of ships that was bringing soldiers and supplies from the Pacific to Northern Africa by way of the Panama Canal.

“Of the 92 ships that began that trip only about half of them made it,” said Puissegur.

He was preparing for what would perhaps be the biggest battle of the Pacific Theatre — the invasion of Japan — when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hirsoshima. A second followed shortly afterward in Nagasaki.

Days later Japan signed their unconditional surrender to Allied Forces. 

“Of course, we didn’t know about the bomb until it hit,” said Puissegur. “We were occupying Okinawa at the time, getting ready to invade.” 

When asked whether there was any celebrating upon learning about Japan’s surrender, Puissegur surprisingly said that, while they were very happy and relieved, the ship didn’t exactly have a party atmosphere on the way back to the United States. 

“We were tired and just wanted to go home,” he said. 

Perhaps the main reason Bill Puissegur was in a rush to get home was a young woman from Rayne named Antionette, who would eventually become his wife. 

When Ann Mire, who was present during Thursday’s interview, asked Bill if he knew Antionette would be waiting for him, he smiled and said, “No, but I sure hoped so.”

Bill and Antionette Puissegur married and became the parents of eight children — four girls and four boys. They have 17 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

While Puissegur’s service record is highly impressive it is perhaps surpassed by the fact that during the six years he served in World War II he never was injured, even after once having to climb an antennae under enemy fire to restore communications to his base.

“I think the Lord spared me because he knew I was crazy and that I was going to be the father of eight kids,” he laughed.

His memory of Dec. 7, 1941, will forever remain. 

“I really hated to see so many young men lose their lives that day ... it was hard,” he said. 

“But we never — not even once — believed that we would lose that war.”