Early on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the battleship USS Ward was patrolling the waters around the entrance to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
When another American vessel spotted a periscope peeking out of the waves nearby, the Ward and its 115 sailors — at least 85 of whom were St. Paulites — motored over to investigate.
The periscope belonged to a miniature Japanese submarine operated by a two-man crew. When it reappeared, the Ward’s skipper ordered his men to open fire.
Two of the ship’s 4-inch deck guns responded with a volley of explosive shells weighing more than 30 pounds apiece. A round from Gun No. 3 smashed through the mini-sub’s conning tower, sinking the vessel.
The men of the Ward didn’t yet realize it, but they had just fired the first American shots of World War II. Japanese warplanes began bombing Pearl Harbor about an hour later.
“I didn’t know that when we sank that sub, we had started a war,” crew member Bernard Kinderman told the Pioneer Press 35 years later.
The gun that fired that fateful shot is now proudly displayed on the Minnesota State Capitol Mall in St. Paul. But lately it has fallen into disrepair, plagued by rust and peeling paint.
Randal Dietrich, executive director of the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum, submitted a request in August to the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board to move the gun to his institution at Camp Ripley in Little Falls.
The 49-year-old museum, which will open a new 40,000-square-foot facility in summer 2026, wants to restore Gun No. 3 and house it in a planned World War II gallery, safe from the elements.
“It’s a priceless World War II artifact,” Dietrich said. “I think it’s incumbent upon us to act, to make sure that gun and what it represents is not lost to time.”
The CAAP Board will vote on whether to consider Dietrich’s request at its next meeting on March 24, said Erik Dahl, the board’s executive secretary. Members of the public will then have 30 days to comment on whether the gun should be moved. A final decision from the board is likely sometime this summer.
Seven decades of wear and tear
Members of the crew of the USS Ward pose for a photo with their ship’s battle scoreboard. Bottom row: J.L. Spratt, A.J. Fink, Orville Ethier, C.W. Fenton, D.R. Pepin, Giles Le Clair, F.V. Huges. Top Row: R.B. Nolde, W.G. Grip, H.F. Germarin, H.J. Harris, H.K. Paynter, J.K. Lovsted, W.H. Duval, I.E. Holley, W.S. Lehner, F.J. Bukrey, and F.L. Fratta. All are from St. Paul, except Duval and Holley. (Photo courtesy of the United States Navy)
The gun has been mounted just west of the Veterans Services Building since 1958, when it was loaned to the state by the U.S. Navy at the urging of U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey and members of the First Shot Veterans Club, which Kinderman and his Ward shipmates formed after the war.
The 11,000-pound piece of ordnance was carefully strapped into a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” transport plane for the trip to Minnesota from Washington, D.C., where it was on display at the Washington Navy Yard, according to a Pioneer Press article published at the time.
The gun was so heavy that the plane couldn’t carry enough fuel for the whole trip and had to make a pit stop at an Air Force base in Illinois.
All nine members of the crew that operated Gun No. 3 were in attendance when it was unveiled that May.
Ward veterans made annual pilgrimages to the gun on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Those gatherings became smaller and smaller with the passing decades, until none was known to be left alive.
The years have also taken a toll on the gun itself. The Minnesota Department of Administration, which is responsible for the gun’s maintenance, has no dedicated budget for its upkeep.
The last restoration work the department undertook was in 2020, when it used leftover funds from the renovation of the Capitol to clean and paint the gun, Assistant Commissioner Curtis Yoakum said. But it has already begun to show its age again.
A memo prepared by CAAP Board staffers reported that “exposure to elements will continue to degrade this valued piece of history. The lack of dedicated maintenance funds for an outdoor memorial will inevitably result in continued degradation.”
A new home for Gun No. 3
The gun from the USS Ward needs to be stripped of old paint, have the rust removed and be repainted. (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)
Dietrich and his organization have spent several months building their case for removing Gun No. 3 from the Capitol Mall.
In February 2024, the museum hired Paul Storch, a professional objects conservator, to assess its condition. He found the gun was suffering from “continued metal loss and disfigurement,” and recommended it be stored indoors.
Storch was one of several people to speak in favor of advancing Dietrich’s proposal during an initial public comment hearing before the CAAP Board in December. No one spoke in opposition.
To pay for the move, the museum secured a $275,000 grant last year from the Legacy Committee of the Minnesota Legislature. The museum would cover any additional expenses itself.
In addition to seeking the approval of the CAAP Board, Dietrich also had to submit an application to the Navy — which still owns the gun — to have the loan agreement transferred from the state of Minnesota to his museum. This application was recently approved, he said.
The museum is no stranger to acquiring massive pieces of military history and integrating them into its collection. In 2022, it acquired the conning tower and rudder of the USS Minneapolis St. Paul submarine, which will be displayed outside its new facility.
Its plans for the Ward gun call for an ambitious exhibit that tells the story of the men who served on the ship, many of whom have donated artifacts to the museum over the years.
“We’ll be able to experience this gun comfortably in any weather, and be surrounded by the images and voices of the Minnesotans who served aboard the Ward and took that decisive action on Dec. 7,” Dietrich said.
From Minnesota to Oahu
Navy photo of the USS Ward’s Number Three Gun and its crew. They were Minnesota reservists credited with firing the first shot in defense of Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. The gun, displayed for decades on the Minnesota Capitol grounds, may move to a new museum near Little Falls, Minn. (Collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command)
The crew of the Ward comprised primarily Naval reservists from St. Paul, many of whom likely believed a training cruise on the Great Lakes was the closest they would get to the open ocean.
But in late 1940, the secretary of the Navy activated all reserve units and placed them on standby. Soon 85 St. Paulites of the 47th Naval Reserve Division were boarding a train at Union Depot bound for California.
“Hell, I thought when I joined the reserves that I’d be on submarine patrol on the Upper Mississippi,” St. Paulite Basil Grindall told the Pioneer Press in 1986. “Then — bang! — they put us on active duty. If you wanted to see a bunch of men cry, you should have been on that train out of St. Paul.”
Assigned to the Ward, an antique battleship commissioned during the First World War, these Midwesterners struggled to get their sea legs on the voyage from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Island of Oahu, where they were to be stationed at Pearl Harbor.
Richard Thill, who worked in the ship’s galley, remembered having little to do at first.
“We weren’t making any meals because nobody would eat ’em,” Thill said in 2016. “You heaved all over the place.”
After making history at Pearl Harbor that December, the Ward was refitted as a transport ship and saw action across the Pacific Theater, including at Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
Some of the St. Paulites of the ship’s original crew were still aboard on the third anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor — Dec. 7, 1944 — when the pilot of a damaged Japanese fighter plane flew directly into her midsection and sank her.
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