ins. >> almost 2400 americans were killed and almost 1200 wounded. the next day president roosevelt appeared before a joint session of congress to declare war on japan. this year marks the 75th anniversary of the pearl harbor and the u.s. entry into world war ii. up next, we hear from survivors who were stationed in honolulu in 1941. the national park service conducted the oral history. this is about an hour. >> we were in the hurricane for nine days, coming over from san diego. here you have a rather green crew. we got into honolulu, and some of us got liberty. theook a taxi into

, and i gotn downtown a soda, and one said you were ss ward. u.s. has u i said, yes, how did you know? 4 destroyers. we rotated duty guarding the entrance to pearl harbor. and requesting a destroyer escort on the surface to approach pearl harbor. called toentimes been general quarters when the sonar man believed he heard the

cruise. the captain backed up the sonar man all the time. it was that responsibility, and we knew it, to sink any sub attempting to reach pearl harbor submerged. the and terry's supply ship was coming into pearl harbor a little before that. and touring the barge, this little too-man sub was trying to sneak into the harbor. it looked like a 50 gallon oil drum with a broomstick sticking up. course, that broomstick was the periscope, and i'm sure the men on the bridge could tell there was something like your this so at the top of broomstick, they could see the

periscope. it was too far away for us to know it was anything like that. we thought it might have been a toy. -- who knows? we had never seen anything like a two-man summary before. the ship was rolling and the shells that the crew men were ready to load into the gun weighed over 75 pounds. staggering all over that rolling, pitching deck with and you are kind of afraid of that kind of ammunition. we fired, and you can watch down the and of the barrel and you could see the projectile just barely missed the sub. i thought if it had another coat it might have activated the fuse. that is how close that thing came. it hit at the base of the tower, it killed the

japanese commander of that sub. the captain said, standby to ram. he made up his mind he was going to get that simmering one way or another. we found out later it not only had two torpedoes, but it had a 500-pound detonation charge in the stern and the skipper of that sub was supposed to come alongside another ship and pull himself up along with that ship. we were a little excited to find another submarine that close on the surface. was -- was that it not supposed to be there. i think my impression was perhaps this submarine might have been one single reconnaissance effort. i had no concept that all it would be followed up with major combat.

the planes coming, which was an hour and 20 minutes later. member of thew utility squadron two, on the luke field side of ford island. that particular sunday i have the duty and i was actually at the hangar at the time the attack began. i was waiting to muster the ongoing duty section. we thought a plane had crashed. we ran out of the hangar, our thing or, looking -- our hangar, looking across the runway. we saw smoke coming from the hangar. we still did not know what was happening. and about that time, here comes the plane. they dropped two bombs and pulled out of the dive. we could see the symbol of the sun under his wings and than we knew we were being attacked by the japanese. we did not have any bomb shelters. i was still looking for a place to hide when here comes the

japanese plane flying from south to north on the west side of ford island. low, iy were flying so could actually see the goggles on the rear gunner's helmet. he swings the machine gun around and begins to strafe. i looked up and there is this concrete where the bullets were hitting, just splattering concrete dust. i jumped behind this tractor that was parked there. they gave me the protection i needed. i noticed a couple of my shipmates had pulled up the 45 caliber pistol that had been use the night before. the guys had just taken the pistols often laid them on the table to exchange with the ongoing duty section. a couple of them grabbed the pistols and started shooting at the japanese planes with these pistols. i discovered there is a motion -- an emotion or strong than fear, and that a shame.

i began to feel so ashamed of myself. i said, here i am trained to be a gunner and i am hiding. the lord gave me enough guts to leave my hiding place and go into the armory where the machine guns were stored. we took the machine guns and put them in the mounts of our planes parked on the ground. the last gun i put in was a catalina patrol bomber. and then i got behind that gun and i manned it for the rest of the attack. i think everybody has a little coward in them, but once you can way,ver that -- and by the this is where i praise the training of the united states .avy they train and train and train and you do it over and over and over. and when the time came, we just did what we were trained to do. we did not have to think. you just did what you were trained to do. . was angry my feelings went from fear to

shame to anger. if i could have, i would have shot every one of them down. and was the way i felt. still mixed in there, that fear was in the background now, but it was still there. the planes were just everywhere like beesbeeves -- around the hive. i don't know how they kept from running into each other. i'm sure it was all planned out, they had rehearsed it and rehearsed it. by this time, you could close your eyes and shoot in the air and you were bound to hit something because they were everywhere. but this particular plane, i or a it had dropped a bomb on probably the california, because he was pulling out of his dive and was coming right across the runway, headed right over our hangar. and all of our gunners, including yours truly, was

shooting at him. he approached us and he burst into flames. out ofand smoke trailing his tail. it looked like he was going to crash right out there in the channel. he got in the middle of the channel and all of a sudden he does a little arc and dive and purposely crashes on the deck of the uss curtis. and that became known as the first, causey of world war ii. it was uncanny what they were able to pull off there. like yamamoto said, they woke a sleeping giant. : the previous week, the starboard side had a picnic there and this week we were going, so we were looking forward to it. i had been there, oh, a couple months earlier. we had a nice time. they were playing baseball,

pitching horseshoes. there were planes flying down like -- not like if they were, we assumed they were doing target practice. we would have pulled the target behind us. them and we said, hey, what kind of emblems are those? we could not understand, why are they doing this on a sunday? wedid not realize -- discussed this among ourselves and the few seconds that we had. we saw ass the bay, ship smoking, so the officer of the day was on the quarter deck also and he had the bugler sounded the fire and rescue. do what ever we had to do and we had a call.

the lay that call. and a few seconds after that, we heard the familiar -- [hums] to generale call quarters. we said, those are japanese planes. thewe could think of where japanese. the resume its going on between the japanese and our country. many things flashed through my mind. one of them was, hey, what is my mother going to say if i am killed? there was oil on the ship. day, this was oily, so i climbed that up even with the oil, and you know how hard you've got to grip. it's like trying to hold onto a greased cake. you can see what you can do when there is anxiety or fright or anger, danger, whatever you want to call it. let's say time heals everything. that is the way i look at it.

how long are you going to hold your anger? are you going to die with it? i don't want to die with it. .et's say we did the opposite did they forgive us about your shema? did they forgive us about hiroshima. -- did they forgive us about your shema? i think we should forgive them. it saves lives on both sides. fiske: iran up to my battle station -- i ran up to my battle station. the captain came up and this was a little after, a couple minutes heer 8:00 and he came up and said, my god, we are at war. there was a tremendous explosion on the tennessee near a number two guns or it, and there was .hrapnel all over the place and then looked around and the captain was laying on the deck.

he was almost tore in half. we made him as comfortable as we could. and this is just a little bit, eight or nine minutes after 8:00, and we stood up and all of a sudden i saw the arizona explode. and i tell you, i was never so scared in my whole life. you could feel the tremendous heat and the concussion lewis back into the pilot house. came back out and captain bening was laying there. we got the executive officer. the commander came up and the captain was still alive and he looked down and he said, captain, what are my orders? the only thing the captain said , the ship is yours. i'm not going to make it, and that's all. and we stayed up on the bridge

through all of the torpedoes and strafing and then the commander told us, what the hell are we doing? let's get blower we can help out. we rescued some people from down below. i was with a group -- there were three of us. we busted one of the doors open because everything was sprung shut. we got two officers out. the water was about of to our navels. we climbed back up on the quarter deck. the fire was just -- i mean, we did everything we could. ,ome of the guys coming up their close were burning. we threw them down on the deck and tried to pat the fire out. fired upthe tennessee our engines, and to push the fire from the water, push it away from the ship, that helped

a lot. then the tugboat came up and started to squirt us with water, and then commander helen caught ship. said to abandon we passed the word to abandon ship. that was around 9:30. then we fought our way back. fire forward.a it was not as much after the arizona. gosh, i left my money and my wallet. my wallet is in my locker. he fights his way back through all of the fire. in the case makes, we have these five-inch shells sitting along the bulkhead to lose. if they got hot, they were going to blow up. so, he finds his way back through the casemate's, gets to his locker, opens it up, gets his water out -- gets his wallet out. this takes three or four minutes. . mean, he was going to make it

he takes off his close unfolds them up nice and the lay. he did not want to get them wet. he was in his skivvies and you swim to fort allen and all of his money stayed right there. i will never forget that. it is strange. folks -- ithe remember diving into the water, i remember climbing on for allen -- on four hour. but the 50 or 60 yards is gone. i don't know. and i can't tell you. i don't know. 7:00, we heard these airplanes coming in and we thought they were japanese and they were off of the enterprise, and i wasn't the first one to open up. because they were firing before i started to shoot. but as they were coming in, boy, it looked like the fourth of

july. we shot down six. we killed three of the pilots. one of the guys coming in, as he was landing, i was up on the machine gun, and i filled his airplane full of holes and i did not realize it was one of our spirit and the guy's name is -- i don't know if you ever met him or not -- jim daniels. he is a good friend of mine. [laughter] but he said if he could have caught me that night, he would have killed me. i believe he would have, too. i think it was wednesday or thursday i finally got some sleep. sleep.t couldn't you were on watch all the time. you are on watch, you are eating sandwiches. and you are supposed to -- the eight hours you are off, you're supposed to sleep, but you can't do it. your nerves are just right on the edge. and i think there was about -- i think wednesday or thursday i fell asleep.

and of course it was a while before i could hear from all of those torpedoes. we took nine torpedoes and the arizona long up. and the tennessee was completely firing their five-and -- five-inch guns. of course, i wear hearing aids today, but it was about a week before i could really hear. we had 106 dead, about three hundred, over 300 wounded. and of course, our captain received the congressional medal of honor. i played taps for him the next in the warehouse where we stayed, you know, and it was the most beautiful caps on ever played in my whole life.

>> pennsylvania was -- edward land: it was admiral kimball's ship. he just did not happen to be on it these days. the japanese are tacking, the jabs are attacking. most of us knew eventually we were going to have to fight the japanese. where that trickle down from, i have no idea. i suppose the politicians, the officers, but we expected to fight them eventually. we just didn't know when. there is no need for radio communication. it was obvious to all of the ships in the harbor we were under attack. so, they had us handing in the nation out to the 350. i had just men handed a three

was gettingand i ready to run it out to the gun again, and the next thing i knew, i was flat on my face. i had a six by eight inch long through the left thigh. i had five pieces of shrapnel in the left leg. shot.ht hand was i lost part of my left elbow. i lost part of my left bicep. they finally put me in the bunk. i was lying there, and i saw one of the third class radio makers and i said, hey, housman. he looked at me and he said, who are you? and then i realized that either something is wrong with me or something is wrong with him. and.i said, it's hyl go, oh, oh,id was

and walkway for me. i found the navy had me listed as superficial wounds. it seems the big problem was trying to keep me alive because of the burns when the bomb went off. the blast just took all of the skin off our legs, arms, face. and t-shirt on. that was her combat uniform. my brother was a sergeant with the marine detachment in indianapolis and they were out on patrol. .e saw me about a year later he said when he came -- i guess it was wednesday after the attack, he came over looking for me and they had me on the missing list. at that time, we had this large navy hospital. he went over there looking for me. he finally found a group of us all lined up. they had tagged mitel already. that is how he identified me. he said even he did not know me.

like roastooked turkey. the pearl harbor story is important to me because people should be made aware of these things, that they really did they won't hopefully happen again. but of course, that's dreaming because it happens in the world every day. somewhere. importcy: wii game december 5. we waited in the channel for the lexington, which was the world's largest aircraft carrier. port december 5. i saved $400 and i was going to go to medical school. the day before was not eventful except i did not go anywhere. i did not go ashore. honolulu in those days was not -- waikiki was not a favorite

port because there were no women. there were 2000 men, 2000 for every woman, so we like the state side. somebody said, what are all of those planes in the air? what are all of these planes doing out on a sunday morning? i could hear vaguely a droning, which was not unusual. fort allen was unable airbase. time i -- fort allen was a naval airbase. by the time i looked up skyward, i was almost positive there were a vof them coming in formation. i saw the bomb struck. i saw a huge red flame and black smoke. i thought, oh, my god. somebody really goofed because those are real bombs. thought, my god. somebody really made a mistake. those are real bombs. just about that time, i felt the ship lurch.

we were being hit by torpedoes on the opposite side, which, of course, i could not see that side. when he torpedoes hit, i actually felt the ship lurch. aroundp was somewhere 22,000 tons. we were not walking around. and when a bomb would hit, you could feel the ship. this was kind of an outward feeling, and i'm sure there was a torpedo. there is some question about whether the bombers got there first. i am sure that lurch was a torpedo. there is a matter of seconds before the bugle sounded general quarters. you know, that is were you go to your battle station. , my battle station was midship. as i was running down, running down the passageway, the ship lurched again.

now this time, i don't know whether it was a bomb or to peta. but it knocked me through a lot of room door, you know where they kept the records. i went this way. dazed.p a little you don't have time to think. anyway, i dived down the ladder. our battle stations were below the deck. no sooner than we were down there and we could tell the ship was already listing. this was a matter of 1, 2, three minutes. everybody is looking around. what in the world is going on? what is happening? there, i'm sure not over a minute or two and then the .ugler sounded abandon ship they were chanting, abandon ship, abandon ship. we had taken on ammunition in san francisco for the fleet. ammunition depot was

loaded. we were going all over the ocean with this ammunition and i thought, oh, my word, when this ship sinks it's going to blow up . i wanted to get away fast. these things occur to you in a matter of seconds. i was going to run and dive way out. and about then, the shipper really lurched. i thought for some time after it was another bomber torpedo, but actually it was the mooring lines. was 22,000 tons. these great, big lines holding the ship. and so, as the ship was sinking, those lines snapped and when they snapped, that threw me off balance and i landed on my fanny and scraped across those barnacles, you know, on the side in the bottom. when i got in the water, when i tried to get my bearings, i saw the was alaunch, and caucus -- i guess a coxswain, in the bowel.

bow. the we were pulling these guys out of the water. i started swimming for that motor launch. pingld see the ping, ping, in the water, the bullets hitting the water. you make decisions in seconds. and i figured, that is going to be a target. and that is going to stick little old me by myself. i changed course. i headed straight for fort allen. he wasody else tells you first on the beach, he is a liar because i was first on the beach. i was transferred to the hospital. we got these aviators, japanese aviators for days, weeks even, and they would be brought to the morgue. and when they were stripped, we would find these maps. they have these rate -- there's a lot of japanese riding in the

margins, but the names of all of the ships -- there's a lot of in the margins, but the names of all of the ships was in english. the lexington was where we were. it was such an unbelievable thing. i cannot believe it. even when i saw the arizona burning, we could not believe the scene. happened to me, you know and what happened to our ship. it was just too incredible for words. dr. george laitner: ever since i 3, i had an idea about going to see in seeing the world. i am listed for basic training ndd decided that aloha la would just be wonderful. hula girls and all that kind of thing.

1941, there were about 13 of us who were still together who had enlisted in omaha, who would come to port townsend. we are talking 17, 18-year-old kids. we decided we were going to the bar and we really going to celebrate. that was the black cat. the black cat had a huge menu above the bar. a is for something, b is for something, g is for g. a night of will have this. we started with the a's, and we would all have around, what ever we are talking 17, 18-year-old kids. they did not care. if you have the money to buy it -- that is the way it was. :55 a.m., i was7

in sick bay and i was talking to a friend of mine who was a pharmacist mate. at i said, what do you have that is going to take care of this? and then the bombs started coming and i really did not know whether this was something i was imagining. there was the pounding and all of themind. playing, clang, clang -- this is a way the landing party, this is general quarters, this is everything. is.dy knows what it we have 300 guys running around saying what are we doing? this was fire and rescue. ok, i will go to that station. i get to there and say where are you going? general quarters, i will go there.

this is something else and we are all wondering around wondering what the devil to do. each one of us was so confused we have no more idea of what was going on than anything. all we ever worked with was dummy wooden ammunition. below, five or six stories, way down in the magazine, it is locked. court-martial, a summary court-martial to open that unless you have an officer. god,re up on top saying my they are flying around, they are coming. send that the live ammunition. are all are like you drunk up there. i'm not going to get in this simmering court-martial. nobody's going to open this thing up. back andme we are

forth, the live ammunition starts coming and we start firing. at that time, there were not world tensions. you didn't expect to get into problems and didn't think about really having a war. when the japanese attack, we said it would take two weeks and maybe we would blow them out of the water and we would all go home. some said they wouldn't shave until we won the war and they would let their hair grow until we won the war. different kind of thing, concept, feeling. one of our men was there for some official reason or another and came back and told us of the sinking of the battleships and he was out of his mind.

we never expected, never thought pushuld happen, and the over japanese taper tiger kind of thing, we will get them. >> i had a chance to go home for a weekend pass and it was on , all ofday morning these explosions going on and i was wondering what was happening. i looked up in the sky in the direction of pearl harbor and it was a bright morning, a nice all of and i could see the bright stuff and then we heard over the radio that all military personnel were reporting to the station immediately. have attacked pearl harbor and this is war.

shocked and we had a bus station right in honolulu. from there, as we were traveling over to schofield barracks where i were stationed at the time, looked down into pearl harbor and i had a panoramic view of the destruction. the ships were on fire and what stood out in my mind was the oklahoma had capsized. it was on its side and i saw sailors aboard the whole of the and that was for them to keep out because the water was on fire. . was shocked

we were expecting the japanese navy to come down and invade us, invadeturns out they did us but it was by air. it was a total surprise. i couldn't get over it. we had a big group of japanese worried they were were going to take the japanese you didn't have to be japanese. if you had a japanese name or you were adopted by someone with a japanese name, you were automatically taken. when i got wind they were going to do it, take the japanese boys out, i figured that's it and mistake because i felt the 298 infantry was one of the best fighting units.

we were prepared and we were trained well but as soon as we got word that happened, our morale went down. my particular case, i might as well get out of there. before i went to the signal corps area and asked the man in charge if they needed an electrician and for them to put a request from there to the infantry, which they did. i look at it from this point of view because we talk like animals and that was nothing at all to us. we felt awful because being there in that person's vote.

>> i had never been on a destroyer. i'd never seen inside one but i knew that's where i wanted to go and i asked for destroyer duty and got orders to go. in the early morning of december 7, starting at midnight, i was and i had tor deck watch from midnight to 4:00. in and it, i turned was asleep. when i heard the alarm next-door , my roommate came in who was just coming off watch. his name was wesley p craig. the watch was relieved about a quarter before the hour so he was shuffling around and i heard the alarm go off.

dunderhead on the downs must have sounded the general alarm. the general alarm on all ships in the navy was used to call the crew to quarters or to muster at 8:00 in the morning every day except sunday. unusual toat all hear an alarm sounding someplace across the harbor because somebody would forget it was sunday and turned the general alarm. so that was not a surprise. and thoughtr nothing about it and within two or three minutes, craig was back in a severe voice and said wake up, get up, we are being bombed. i got out in a hurry and the skipper on the main deck just outside the room, he was in a

hurry to get the magazine's office so we can get some five , so there wasn not much for me to do, so i went on top of the bridge and the thing i remember most is the high-level bombers in a v-shaped formation going from left to right, more or less in line from where the battleships would be. we could very clearly see the bombs falling. this son reflected from the bombs as a fella and we could see them as they came down, especially when they first left the airplanes. it got very noisy where we were. we were being strafed and bombed. i remember seeing a good fire ofrt back on the port side

our shift and her member seeing men on their hands and knees trying to scramble away from the flame. i thought certainly we've lost some people here. raging.s were really , the lieutenant commander said abandon ship. that's what we all do it in a hurry. we just trotted away from the ship. there was no hurry because you may be running into more of a problem than you are running away from. i was with a radioman -- i don't recall his name but i know him -- i would know him if he walked near me today. we were 30 or 40 arts from the ship when there was an explosion behind us. hit on the side of the dry dock. between the ship and where we were, i have a picture of it in

this report that shows the work standing in the crater. some of that debris hit me on the helmet and some became along and wanted to know in a hurry where or how they could get to the fuel stocks or the controls that allow the fuel to be pumped into the ship. for some reason, i knew something about that. i don't know who this guy was but i took him and we flagged the car down and went in toward a submarine base and i got this guy where he thought he wanted to go and i went to the submarine base. boatswere several torpedo roaring their engines alongside the submarine base. i stepped aboard one and asked if i could go a long. the skipper of that ship was lieutenant jg harry parker.

he looked at me and said what can you do? i said on the torpedo officer and he said my torpedo man is not here, come with us. abreast of the ship, the forward magazine which had a fire for some number of minutes detonated. came down on pt 22. it went through the engine room -- through the main deck and into the engine room. it must have been 10:00 when a japanese plane came down fairly low over the harbor and we took a shot at it. that was the last plane i saw. he looked at me and could tell i was not a pt boat or because i was still wearing white. he said what ship are you from and i said the cason.

he said the cason is no more. he said you go into that submarine base, the closest holding and going to the first office on the left and turn that is to lynn. sidewalk to the submarine base office and he told me to go in, up the highway, back along the to the other end of the building and out. turned to the wreck and to docket number one with my pistol. it was so hungry to get into a good war and this was undoubtedly the best way to do it. >> i ask for duty on that vessel

because my brother was on the vessel. wasalked about how good it and how you could learn something there. he was right. i learned a lot. everything you need to do to repair another ship, we did it. i wanted to put in my years there to learn something. i did not plan on pearl harbor. we got a call from somebody that ordered work to be done on the arizona. i think it was work on the evaporators. they probably had another few things we could do. onad the 4:00 to 8:00 watch sunday morning.

i was relieved of my watch and ,he guy that was to relieve me he almost fell asleep but i gave , went up back on deck and airplanes and i heard noises. my brother being in the battery iran backthe vessel, ande -- i ran back there got a cup of coffee and told them something was happening. sayard the quartermaster those are japanese planes. and the coffeeer drinkers about that i don't know

whether they believed me or not, but they rang the fire drill. -- i saw thees fighters coming by, strafing everything in sight. was the high-level bombers. the same thing that hit the arizona, high-level bombers. these were 16 inch naval projectors that they had modified. the old vessel wasn't important but we were in the wrong place and it went all the way through the ship and began to flood the aft part of the ship.

was whenut that time the same type bomb came into the arizona magazine and that was quite a bit of noise. we sure heard it. it dropped the ship bad and it blew quite a few people over the side. there were a lot of flash burns from the fire, but our captain went back to see why the gun wouldn't work. he should not have been there. he got blown over the side. officers, i'mhe not sure who it was. it doesn't make a difference now, ordered abandon ship.

they had taken most of the casualties to the radio room. everybody was either going over the side or i was headed for the get into ang to theselaunch and i noticed injured in the radio room, so i got another guy and we carried a guy that i knew who had been hurt in the back and we carried him, quite a bit more than i did. and put himim down in the boat. by that time, our captain had come back aboard and countermanded the order to abandon ship. so we went back to our battle stations. normally when you are in this condition, you don't have enough

steam up to maneuver. you got enough to run a yourator or alternator, but don't have steam to maneuver. hitof that time when they and we wanted to get out of there, we could not do it. we would have been down there with the arizona except for a time that came by, i forgot which one it was. it through a line to as an began to pull us away. power.d no operate theot antiaircraft guns, not normally. they tried to do it manually. i know this because i saw them. they were firing their five inch guns once in a while.

fire had spread and was just about all around them. sure that it was my imagination. i don't inc. it was, but i saw those gunners fire all around them, trying to train the guns around and they were dying there. really. i've tried to suppress that idea as much as i can because it and is me quite a bit don't even like to remember it. 55 years later i don't even like to think about it. happened. those on the aft part of the arizona were fortunate because

they did not get killed by concussion or lack of oxygen or whatever. they were fortunate. that's about the only one that survived. the japanese missed a lot of chances. really, they did. whichissed the fire hole was loaded with a lot of 16 and 14 inch ammunition. they missed it by about 10 feet. it went to the doc where they were tied up. the oil storage tanks.

if we didn't have oil, we did not operate and they did not get those. if they would have got those, they would have flooded the harbor with burning oil and they missed the gasoline. they did not get that. harbor, we at pearl blamed roosevelt for a lot of this. the government wanted to get us in the war so that we could go against germany. opinions -- it was plannedout were almost to allow the japanese to do this. history would not support that but to me, it sure

makes a little bit of sense that we could have been notified, , that we would not have had all those people killed and it bothers us. we knew we would have an altercation because tojo had signed a pact with hitler's and we were sending convoys over in europe and had been helping the chinese in china, chang kai-shek , trying to keep the chinese from getting butchered over there, which they were doing a pretty good job of. and we had lost a gunboat there a few years earlier. we knew sooner or later that we would have a problem, but we did

not think it would be at pearl harbor. it was too far away. on seven, december, 41, i was serving on a tugboat. all of the tugs were named after indian tribes. we were up working already. as we were going, we saw the patrolhe destroyer on duty. again, there is nothing exciting about this because these patrol things used to drop depth charges. in this instance, what he picked up was a submarine and he dropped depth charges in the submarine surfaced and then sank it with gunfire. this was about one hour for the attack on perl.

out,marine attack a mile doesn't tell us we are going to have an air attack. there was no correlation. hardly anybody was scared until after that. until after everything stopped. we didn't know what was going to happen next. were they going to come back and try to invade or what. while the attack was on, everyone was mad. -- all she wanted to do was get at the japanese. all the time, these bombers were dropping these bonds and you could hear them coming down. then we would run back and do whatever it was we were doing. >> we had a party all scheduled. an automobile, an officer with about a court of booze a week

and someone had a little black book of the girls names and we were headed over to a party on the beach. i had a bunkmate named barney who lived up washington way and we were asleep. the building started rattling. we didn't think much about it. we went downstairs and looked out and saw it was more than what we thought. we came down to the water's edge which was roughly about 100 yards and we watched the arizona sink in nine minutes. we were spellbound and couldn't think of what to do. up, thee ship lou sailors -- after the ship blew up, sailors started coming ashore with the skin peeling off their back and arms all full of

oil. we helped him out of the water and i remember taking one man named flanigan and took him to the hospital. when you got to the hospital, there was a doctor. he said go here and thought if he couldn't save him right off, he went down to the second line fellow whos the couldn't make it. if you are physically aboard the ship, the remains could be interned in the ship -- interred in the ship. anyone on board the ship would have that privilege. that was number one. back in about 1981 or before that, my son was on a ship here in 1976 and i thought it's just

too bad and nothing has ever been done. we would have a memorial service or something like that. had 75 or 100 people that were survivors of the arizona or former ships crew. we repeated that and in 1981, we had 300 people out there. is,erday, that's the way it you know? yesterday, we went back to the ship which we always do on the first day coming go right out

there and get that over with. then we have a beautiful memorial service. we had the marine band up there and an international color guard. they closed the memorial up there. on important day. >> to mark the 75th anniversary of the attack on pearl harbor, the national park service and u.s. navy will host a ceremony wednesday in hawaii. and at the world world -- world war ii memorial, senator john mccain will be the keynote speaker. c-span cameras will be there and you can watch the ceremonies here on american history tv on saturday, december 10 getting at 9:30 a.m. eastern.

american history tv -- only on c-span3. >> follow the transition of government on c-span as president-elect donald trump select his cabinet and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress. we will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch live on c-span watch on-demand at c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> welcome to tempe, arizona on american history tv. located just america -- 11 miles from the state capital of the next, this city of 160,000 is the home of arizona state university. with help from our cox communications partners, and the next hour, we will explore the history of the city. coming up, we will visit the asu art museum and look at items from their political friends collection.