101-Year-Old Pearl Harbor Survivor Returning to Hawaii for 80th Anniversary of Attack

David Russell, a 101-year-old survivor of the Pearl Harbor bombing, is set to join 100 other World War II veterans in Hawaii Tuesday for a remembrance ceremony 80 years after the tragedy occurred.

Russell, who was a U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class, told the Associated Press he had initially gone below deck in the ill-fated USS Oklahoma when Japanese bombs started to fall on December 7, 1941.

However, being trained to load anti-aircraft guns, he made a last-minute decision to help above deck.

"They started closing that hatch," Russell said. "And I decided to get out of there."

This decision likely saved his life, he said, as underwater missiles quickly capsized the ship, killing 429 sailors and Marines.

"Those darn torpedoes, they just kept hitting us and kept hitting us," he said. "I thought they'd never stop. That ship was dancing around."

Once Russell was on the main deck, he jumped to the nearby USS Maryland, catching a rope hanging from the ship. Once on the Maryland, he continued to help load that ship's anti-aircraft guns.

Russell will be one of the approximately 30 Pearl Harbor survivors to come to Hawaii Tuesday. According to the AP, the trip is sponsored by the Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that helps World War II veterans visit battlefields they fought on.

The remembrance will begin with a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the starting moment of the attack that would kill over 2,300 American troops.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

Altogether 429 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma would perish—the greatest death toll from any ship that day other than the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177.

Survivors, now in their late 90s or older, stayed home last year due to the coronavirus pandemic and watched a livestream of the event instead.

After the battle, Russell and two others went to Ford Island, next to where the battleships were moored, in search of a bathroom. A dispensary and enlisted quarters there had turned into a triage center and place of refuge for hundreds of wounded, and they found horribly burned sailors lining the walls. Many would die in the hours and days ahead.

"Most of them wanted a cigarette, and I didn't smoke at that time but I, uh, I got a pack of cigarettes and some matches, and I lit their cigarettes for them," Russell said. "You feel for those guys, but I couldn't do anything. Just light a cigarette for 'em and let 'em puff the cigarettes."

Russell still thinks about how lucky he was. He ponders why he decided to go topside on the Oklahoma, knowing most of the men who stayed behind likely were unable to get out after the hatch closed.

In the first two days after the bombing, a civilian crew from the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard rescued 32 men trapped inside the Oklahoma by cutting holes in its hull. But many others perished. Most of those who died were buried in anonymous Honolulu graves marked as "unknowns" because their remains were too degraded to be identified by the time they were removed from the ship between 1942 and 1944.

In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed 388 sets of these remains in hopes of identifying them with the help of DNA technology and dental records. They succeeded with 361.

Russell's brother-in-law was among them. Fireman 1st Class Walter "Boone" Rogers was in the fireroom, which got hit by torpedoes, Russell said. The military identified his remains in 2017, and he's since been reburied at Arlington National Cemetery.

Russell remained in the Navy until retiring in 1960. He worked at Air Force bases for the next two decades and retired for good in 1980.

His wife, Violet, passed away 22 years ago, and he now lives alone in Albany, Oregon. He drives himself to the grocery store and the local American Legion post in a black Ford Explorer while listening to polka music at top volume. When he's not hanging out with other veterans at the legion, he reads military history and watches TV. He keeps a stack of 500-piece puzzles to keep his mind sharp.

For decades, Russell didn't share much about his experiences in World War II because no one seemed to care. But the images from Pearl Harbor still haunt him, especially at night.

"When I was in the VA hospital there in San Francisco, they said, 'We want you to talk about World War II.' And I said, I told them, I said, 'When we talk about it, people don't believe us. They just walk away.' So now people want to know more about it so we're trying to talk about it. We're trying to talk about it, and we're just telling them what we saw," he said. "You can't forget it."