Bob Fernandez thought he was going to play and see the world when he joined the United States Navy as a 17-year-old high school student in August 1941.
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Four months later he found himself reeling from the explosion and passing ammunition to the gunners so that his ship’s guns could return fire on Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor, the Navy headquarters in Hawaii.
“When those things were going like that, we didn’t know what it was,” said Fernandez, who is 100 years old. “We didn’t even know we were in a war.”
Two survivors of the bombing – each 100 or older – are planning to return to Pearl Harbor on Saturday to observe the 83rd anniversary of the attack that plunged the US into World War II. They will join active-duty military, veterans and members of the public at a memorial service hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service.
Fernandez originally planned to join them but had to cancel due to health reasons.
The bombing killed more than 2,300 US servicemen. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines aboard the USS Arizona, which sank during the war. The remains of more than 900 members of the Arizona crew are still buried in the sunken ship.
A moment of silence will be observed at 7:54 am, the same time that the attack began eight decades ago. Planes missing from the human formation must fly overhead to destroy the peace.
Hundreds of survivors once attended the annual memorial, but attendance has dwindled as survivors have aged. Today there are only 16 still alive, according to a list kept by Kathleen Farley, chair of the California State of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Military historian J. Michael Wenger estimated that there were 87,000 soldiers on Oahu on the day of the attack.
Many hail the survivors of Pearl Harbor as heroes, but Fernandez doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m not a hero. I’m nothing but a sniper,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from California, where he lives with his nephew in Lodi.
Fernandez was working as a cook aboard his ship, the USS Curtiss, on the morning of December 7, 1941, and planned to go dancing that evening at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.
He brought the sailors coffee and food as he waited tables during breakfast. Then they heard an alarm. Through the hole, Fernandez saw a plane with a red box painted on Japanese planes flying by.
Fernandez ran down three flights of stairs to the magazine room where he and other sailors were waiting for someone to open the door that held the five-inch (12.7-centimeter), 38-caliber shells so they could begin passing them to the ship’s guns.
He told interviewers over the years that some of his fellow sailors were praying and crying when they heard gunshots overhead.
“I felt scared because I didn’t know what was going on,” Fernandez said.
The ship’s guns hit a Japanese plane that fell on one of its cranes. Moments later, its guns struck a submarine bomb that exploded below the deck, setting fire to the main deck, according to the Navy History and Heritage Command.
Fernandez’s ship, the Curtiss, lost 21 men and nearly 60 of its sailors were wounded.
“We’ve lost a lot of good people, you know. They didn’t do anything,” said Fernandez. “But we never know what will happen in war.”
After the attack, Fernandez had to clean up the trash. That night, he stood guard with a gun to make sure no one tried to enter. When it was time to rest, he fell asleep near where the dead lay. He realized that he was woken up by another sailor and told him.
After the war, Fernandez worked as a forklift driver at a cannery in San Leandro, California. His wife of 65 years, Mary Fernandez, died in 2014. His oldest son is now 82 and lives in Arizona. Two other sons and an adopted daughter died.
He went to Hawaii three times to participate in the Pearl Harbor memorial. This year would be his fourth trip.
Fernandez still enjoys music and goes to dance at a nearby restaurant once a week when he can. His favorite music is a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “All of Me,” a song his nephew Joe Guthrie said he still knows by heart.
“Women flock to him like moths to a flame,” said Guthrie.
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