Survivors of Pearl Harbor attack return to honor those who perished 82 years ago

Pearl Harbor, The Gulf Observer: Eighty-two years later, Schab returned to Pearl Harbor Thursday on the anniversary of the attack to remember the more than 2,300 servicemen killed. He was one of five survivors at a ceremony commemorating the assault that propelled the United States into World War II. Six of the increasingly frail men had been expected, but one was not feeling well, organizers said.

The aging pool of Pearl Harbor survivors has been rapidly shrinking. There is now just one crew member of the USS Arizona still living, 102-year-old Lou Conter of California.

Schab, the oldest of those who attended this year’s ceremony, arrived in a wheelchair with his son, daughter and other family.

A crowd of a few thousand invited guests and members of the public joined them in holding a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the same time bombs began falling decades ago.

Four F-22 jets flew overhead and broke the quiet, one splitting away from the rest in a “missing man formation” that honored the fallen.

Thursday’s ceremony was held on a field across the harbor from the USS Arizona Memorial, a white structure that sits above the rusting hull of the battleship, which exploded in a fireball and sank shortly after being hit. More than 1,100 sailors and Marines from the Arizona were killed and more than 900 are entombed inside.

Ira “Ike” Schab had just showered, put on a clean sailor’s uniform and closed his locker aboard the USS Dobbin when he heard a call for a fire rescue party.

He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun up above. He remembers being only 140 pounds (63.50 kilograms) as a 21-year-old, but somehow finding the strength to lift boxes weighing almost twice that.

“We were pretty startled. Startled and scared to death,” Schab, now 103, said. “We didn’t know what to expect and we knew that if anything happened to us, that would be it.”

David Kilton, the National Park Service’s interpretation, education and visitor services lead for Pearl Harbor, noted that for many years survivors frequently volunteered to share their experiences with visitors to the historic site. That’s not possible anymore.