I've heard that story but it sounded like an urban myth. This is so much detail, now I believe it.
Keeping secrets from your parents about how their kids died, must have been that generation's custom. If you did it now, your parents would sue you for emotional injury.
I used to climb up into the lookout towers on the beach at Hickam AFB. Smoked my first cigarette there with my friend. The abandoned towers were still there 20 years after Pearl Harbor Day, in case they were needed again. There was still some oil above the sunken ships in the harbor.