A tribute to a family friend who was a Navy Cross recipient for bravery on the USS Nevada.
USS Arizona, photo taken June 2001. You can see the film on the surface from the oil still leaking from the sunken battleship, where 1,000 of her crew went down with her.
He's 91 and the story he's telling took place 68 years ago, but Don Raleigh doesn't hesitate or search for words as he recounts the events of Dec. 7, 1941.
He remembers.
Raleigh, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who lives in Edmonds, was on board the USS Maryland in Pearl Harbor the morning the Japanese attacked.
At about five minutes to 8, he had just relieved the officer on watch when he looked up and saw a flight of single-engine planes approaching from the south. He didn't think anything of it, he said, until "little black things" started dropping out of them and exploded on Ford Island.
"There was no warning whatsoever," he remembered. "Beautiful Sunday morning and all hell breaks loose."
Raleigh remembers some frustrating moments as the attack began: He had to saw through padlocks on the boxes of ammunition, and the anti-aircraft gun didn't fire at first. Still, he said, there was no panic on the Maryland that he saw.
"I've been asked many times, 'Were you scared?' And the answer is, there wasn't time to be scared," he said. "You're so busy doing the things you were trained to do that being afraid or being scared never enters into your consciousness. You just do your job."
San Jose Mercury News has a piece on a Pearl Harbor survivor who is going back for the first time since the war.
If they're ever performing at an airshow near you, I recommend seeing the Gulf Coast Wing of the Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force and their re-enactment of Pearl Harbor: "Tora, Tora, Tora," which the group put together as a living history lesson to teach future generations the lesson of being prepared. This is what the show looked like in October, 1980, when the group was based in Harlingen, TX.
Pearl Harbor survivor Don Raleigh concludes the Seattle Times article with the same lesson:
Despite the decades separating him from Pearl Harbor, the lessons learned that day are still fresh in Raleigh's mind.
"Be prepared! Be a Boy Scout!" he said. "I like Teddy Roosevelt — 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.'"
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