Pearl Harbor Survivors Gather

Glenn Lane looked over the glass-enclosed scale drawings of the battleship Arizona and traced with his finger the path he took when the Japanese sank the vessel in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 55 years ago.

“We were trying to fight the fire when she blew up,” the 79-year-old Lane of Oak Harbor, Wash., said at the display at the Arizona Memorial. “It came back in a big ball of flame and I put up my arm, and I guess it blew me into the water over here.

“Like a fool, I swam to the Nevada over here,” Lane said. He ended up getting sunk twice in two hours because the sinking battleship Nevada was run aground to prevent it from going down and blocking the harbor entrance.

“Getting tossed into the water kept me from getting burned. Good thing I’m a swimmer or I’d still be out there now,” Lane said during a visit to the gleaming white memorial that straddles the sunken battleship Arizona.

Lane and 10 other Arizona survivors were joined by family members and relatives of other crew members this week on what could be the USS Arizona Reunion Assn.’s final organized trip to the memorial, built in 1961 to remember the 1,177 Arizona crew members killed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The 11 survivors and about 450 from other ships and military bases will participate in ceremonies today marking the anniversary of the Japanese attack that sank 21 American warships, destroyed 165 planes, killed 2,338 military personnel and civilians and plunged the United States into World War II.

During the ceremonies, the ashes of three Arizona crew members, who died recently, will be put in a turret hole of the battleship, joining the estimated 900 crewmen who were entombed in the hulk.

Fewer than 100 Arizona survivors are still alive, and reunion coordinator Ruth Campbell said this could be the last such gathering in Hawaii.

The reunions are held every five years.

Donald Stratton, a survivor now living in Yuma, Ariz., said he has come every time since 1966 and plans to be back in 2001, regardless of the association’s plans.

“It’s kind of a ritual thing,” said Stratton, 76. “Every time we say that Father Time might take care of us, and we might not make it next time. I’m planning on coming back until I’m 100.”

After 55 years, said another survivor, Russell Lott, a 76-year-old retired heavy-equipment operator from Fort Dodge, Iowa, memories of the attack are still vivid.

“It’s like they used an iron and burned it in there,” Lott said.