100-Year-Old Pearl Harbor Survivor Describes the Chaos

Bob Fernandez thought he'd go dancing and see the world when he joined the US Navy as a high school student in August 1941. Four months later, he found himself shaking from explosions and passing ammunition to artillery crews so his ship's guns could return fire on Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor, a Navy base in Hawaii. "When those things go off like that, we didn't know what's what," Fernandez, who's now 100, told the AP. "We didn't even know we were in a war."

The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Fernandez was working as a mess cook on his ship, the USS Curtiss, when he heard an alarm sound. Through a porthole, he saw a Japanese plane fly by. He rushed down three decks to a magazine room, where he and other sailors began distributing ammunition to the ship's guns. "I felt kind of scared because I didn't know what the hell was going on," Fernandez said. Shortly after, the guns hit a dive bomber that slammed into the ship and exploded belowdecks, setting the hangar and main decks on fire. The Curtiss lost 21 men, and nearly 60 of its sailors were injured. "We lost a lot of good people, you know. They didn't do nothing," Fernandez said.

After the attack, Fernandez had to sweep up debris. That night, he stood guard with a rifle to make sure no one tried to come aboard. When it came time to rest, he fell asleep next to where the ship's dead were lying. He only realized that when a fellow sailor woke him up and told him. The bombing killed more than 2,300 US servicemen; nearly half were sailors and Marines on board the USS Arizona, which sank during the battle. The remains of more than 900 Arizona crew members are still entombed on the submerged vessel.

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Dozens of survivors once joined the annual remembrance in Hawaii, but attendance has declined as survivors have aged. Today, there are only 16 still living, and only two planned to return to observe the 83rd anniversary of the attack that thrust the US into World War II. Although many laud Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, Fernandez doesn't view himself that way. "I'm not a hero," he says. "I'm just nothing but an ammunition passer." (More Pearl Harbor stories.)