Dec. 7, 1941, a Day That Will Live in Infamy. That day's 67th anniversary is tomorrow.
The December 3rd Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana had an article by Michelle L. Quinn about Pearl Harbor Survivor Raymond Crane, 83, who spoke at the Hammond Rotary Club's annual Pearl Harbor luncheon.
At the time of the attack, Crane was a 16-year-old Navy Machinist Mate 2C on board the USS Maryland. He knows it only took the USS Oklahoma, tied up alongside, six minutes to capsize, but his sense of time that day is very skewed.
He had been at mass on the Maryland when he heard someone saying there was a Japanese plane flying overhead and looked out a porthole just as the first bomb went off and sirens began. After that, it was pandemonium.
"We went to our stations, which were at the bottom of the Maryland. We said our prayers, and we could feel the boat rocking as the ties to the Oklahoma pulled apart."
"After awhile, we heard some people overhead, so I hit the porthole with a dog wrench. An officer opened it and asked how long we'd been down there, and we told him we'd reported to our station earlier that morning. He looked at us and said, 'That was yesterday! You boys have got to be hungry!!!'"
He remembers a hole being cut into the Oklahoma's capsized hull and four sailors being pulled out from the same battle station he occupied.
That's a Lot for a 16-Year-Old to Experience. --Cooter
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