From Pearl Harbor to Cornelius — The Story of a Ship’s Mast

On November 1, 2017, a siren that had stood in Cornelius for sixty-four years was taken down. For more than six decades it had called volunteer firefighters from across the community to battle blazes on the Tualatin Plains. It has been in storage ever since. Most people who heard that siren over the years had no idea where it came from. The pole that held it was not just any mast. It came from the deck of the USS Dobbin, a United States Navy destroyer tender that was moored at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. This is the story of how a piece of that ship ended up in Cornelius, Oregon, and why it deserves to stand again.

The Ship

The USS Dobbin (AD-3) was launched on May 5, 1921, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and commissioned on July 23, 1924. She was named after James Cochrane Dobbin, who served as Secretary of the United States Navy from 1853 to 1857 under President Franklin Pierce. A destroyer tender was an auxiliary ship designed to provide maintenance, repair and supply support to a flotilla of destroyers and other small warships — the ship that kept other ships fighting.

The Dobbin’s early service took her from Guantanamo Bay to San Diego to Pearl Harbor and back to the Atlantic, where she operated for seven years before returning to San Diego in 1932. In 1939 she was transferred to Hawaii.

December 7, 1941

The USS Dobbin was moored northeast of Ford Island with five destroyers alongside when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. Dive bombers singled out the nest. Fragments from near misses killed three men and wounded several others on board. Concentrated anti-aircraft fire from the Dobbin and the destroyers broke up a second attack before additional damage was done. Throughout the attack, Dobbin’s lifeboats plied the waters of the harbor, rescuing survivors from burning and sinking ships. Over the course of that morning and afternoon, Dobbin’s men saved hundreds of sailors. They had 200 men from the stricken USS Raleigh aboard when the Dobbin departed Pearl Harbor in search of the Japanese carriers.

The ship went on to serve throughout the Pacific. On May 31, 1942, while anchored off Sydney, Australia, she was present during a Japanese midget submarine attack. She was sent to Brisbane, Mackay, Cleveland Bay, and Townsville before settling in Milne Bay, New Guinea, where she remained from September 1943 to February 1945. She was then ordered to the Philippines, where she remained for the rest of the war. On December 7, 1945, exactly four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Dobbin returned to San Diego. She was decommissioned on September 27, 1946. For her service she was awarded the American Defense Service Medal with a Fleet clasp, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one battle star, and the World War II Victory Medal.

From Portland to Cornelius

In 1950, the Zidell Ship Dismantling Company purchased the USS Dobbin from the United States Government. She was towed from Olympia to Astoria by the Puget Sound Towing Company and from there was towed by the sternwheeler Portland with assistance from a Shaver Transportation tug. The 484-foot Dobbin arrived in Portland on September 8, 1950, and her dismantling began.

Somewhere in that process, a mast from the deck of the USS Dobbin found its way to Cornelius, Oregon, where it was put to work holding the fire siren that would call volunteer firefighters to service for the next sixty-four years. How exactly it made that journey is a story still worth tracing. But there it stood, on the Tualatin Plains, a piece of Pearl Harbor in plain sight, for more than six decades.

Ira Schab — The Last Man from the Dobbin

In 2024, one man was still living who had served aboard the USS Dobbin on December 7, 1941. His name was Ira Schab, known to everyone as Ike, and he had been living in Beaverton since 2012. He celebrated his 104th birthday on the Fourth of July, 2024, and in December of that year attended the 83rd anniversary commemoration at Pearl Harbor, one last time standing witness to what he and his shipmates had survived. At the end of November 1941, Ike had been transferred to the USS Dobbin just days before the attack. Being assigned to the tender rather than to one of the destroyers or battleships may well have saved his life. He had a harrowing account of that morning aboard the Dobbin, watching the harbor burn and the lifeboats going out again and again through the smoke and the wreckage.

Ira Schab died at his home in Beaverton on December 20, 2025, with his family by his side. He was 105 years old. At the time of his death, only about a dozen survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack were still living. The last man from the USS Dobbin is gone. The mast from her deck sits in storage in Cornelius.

Why It Should Stand Again

Almost all of the early buildings in Cornelius were wood frame construction. The climate is not kind to wood, and the years have taken most of what was here. We do not have many historic features left in this community. The mast from the USS Dobbin is one of the few remaining tangible connections to both the history of Cornelius and to one of the most significant events in American history.

It carried a siren that generations of Cornelius residents grew up hearing. It stood on the deck of a ship that rescued hundreds of men from burning water at Pearl Harbor. The last sailor who served on that ship has died. The generation that lived through that war is almost entirely gone.

This is the time to put it back up. Veterans Park in Cornelius would give it a proper home, with a marker telling the full story — the USS Dobbin at Pearl Harbor, the dismantling in Portland, the decades of service as a fire siren, and the community of volunteer firefighters who answered its call.

Albert Sholes said the bank building would be a credit to the town. The mast from the USS Dobbin, standing in Veterans Park with its story told properly, would be a credit to the town too. And to the men who served on her. And to Ike Schab, who was the last of them, and who deserved to see it standing before he went.