Author Topic: On 75th anniversary, U.S. veterans recall Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor  (Read 282 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Sanguine

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 35,986
  • Gender: Female
  • Ex-member
Quote
By Dana Feldman and Hugh Gentry

LOS ANGELES/HONOLULU (Reuters) - It has been 75 years, but U.S. Navy veteran James Leavelle can still recall watching with horror as Japanese warplanes rained bombs down on his fellow sailors in the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War Two.

Bullets bounced off the steel deck of his own ship, the USS Whitney, anchored just outside Honolulu harbor, but a worse fate befell those aboard the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS Utah and others that capsized in an attack that killed 2,400 people.

"The way the Japanese planes were coming in, when they dropped bombs, they'd drop them and then circle back," said Leavelle, a 21-year-old Navy Storekeeper Second Class at the time of the attack.

Leavelle, now 96, was among 30 Pearl Harbor survivors honored at a reception in Los Angeles before heading to Honolulu to mark Wednesday's 75th anniversary of the attack....

...For his part, Leavelle would be touched twice by the hand of history. After the war, he became a policeman in Texas. On Nov. 24, 1963, he was the Dallas officer handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy was shot to death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby....

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/75th-anniversary-u-veterans-recall-japanese-attack-pearl-140616228.html

The last bit is just interesting.