UNO grad Stanton Salisbury at Pearl Harbor
In observance of the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor we offer the following story on Stanton Salisbury, a member of UNO’s first graduating class. Salisbury, one of the university’s most distinguished graduates, was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, surviving a strafing of his car by a Japanese fighter plane before tending to the injured and dead in his role as a Navy chaplain.
TIME AFTER TIME, STANTON SALISBURY HAD A FRONT ROW SEAT TO HISTORY - IN WAR AND IN PEACE.
A Decatur, Neb., native, Salisbury was among the first students to attend the University of Omaha when it began in 1909. Four years later, he was part of the university’s first graduating class.
He was ordained a Presbyterian minister then served as an Army chaplain in World War I. Salisbury was decorated multiple times and was at the Battle of the Argonne Forest, the final and largest Allied offensive. A total of 1.2 million Americans were engaged in the campaign, of whom 117,000 were killed or wounded — about half the total AEF casualties for the war.
Fellow Omahan J.E. Styles saw Salisbury in action and wrote about him in a letter to the Omaha World-Herald:
I have seen him go right over the top with his men. The Boche [German soldiers] couldn’t take away his smile, and I tell you, it took a real man to go through the battle of the Argonne with a smile. I think if Omaha could have seen this big, young preacher man where I have seen him, it would be proud … especially the Omaha University.
Salisbury later joined the U.S. Navy as a chaplain. He spent two years on the USS Omaha, then the fastest cruiser in the world. He developed the first revolving altar used in a Navy Chapel, speeding the transition from a Protestant to Catholic service.
On Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, Salisbury and his wife were at a flower shop in Honolulu purchasing altar flowers for a Bible class he led aboard the USS Pennsylvania in Pearl Harbor. While there, the Japanese attacked. Salisbury returned his wife to their hotel, picked up gunnery and supply officers and sped back to the Pennsylvania. Japanese torpedo planes strafed his car on his way to the ship, one bullet lodging 18 inches from him.
He arrived without injury, but chaos and terror were everywhere. Japanese bombers were attacking the navy yard dry dock, hitting multiple ships, including the Pennsylvania. The ship was among the first at Pearl Harbor to return fire, but its crew was hard hit — 15 killed, 14 missing and 38 wounded.
The Rev. Salisbury didn’t hesitate to help. As the website for the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps notes, “He ministered to the wounded and helped move the dead ashore.” In the afternoon he called on the families living in or around Honolulu whose relatives had been killed or wounded aboard his ship.
The surprise attack lasted two hours. Salisbury and the Pennsylvania would survive to see U.S. victory four years later. The Pennsylvania was repaired and put back into action. It traveled nearly 150,000 miles after Pearl Harbor and fired more rounds than any ship during the war. That was in spite of needing so many repairs that it had the nickname, “Old Falling Apart.”
Salisbury stayed with the Pennsylvania into 1942 then had successive appointments at the Chaplains School in Norfolk, Va., with the Navy department, then as district chaplain with the Fifth Naval District.
In 1944 he was assigned duties as chaplain to President Franklin Roosevelt aboard his yacht, the USS Potomac, aka “The Floating White House.” In 1949 President Harry Truman approved Salisbury’s promotion to rear admiral and the Navy’s eighth chief of chaplains. That same year he became the first UNO graduate to receive the Citation for Alumni Achievement.
Salisbury retired in 1953 and died in 1966 in Auburn, N.Y.