PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii — Bob Fernandez thought he was going to dance and see the world when he enlisted in the US Army in August 1941 as a 17-year-old high school student.
Four months later, he found himself reeling from explosions and passing ammunition to artillery crews so that his ship’s guns could fire at Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor, a Navy base in Hawaii.
“When those things went like that, we didn’t know what it was,” said Fernandez, who is now 100 years old. “We didn’t even know we were in a war.”
Two survivors of the bombing – aged 100 and older – plan to return to Pearl Harbor on Saturday to celebrate the 83rd anniversary. attack which brought the US into World War II. They will join active duty troops, veterans and the public for a memorial service hosted by the Army and the National Park Service.
Fernandez originally planned to join them, but had to cancel due to health problems.
The bombing killed more than 2,300 US soldiers. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and sailors aboard the USS Arizona, which sank in the battle. The remains of more than 900 crew members of the Arizona are still buried on the sunken ship.
A moment of silence will be held at 7:54 am, the same time the attack began eight decades ago. The planes that make up the missing man must fly overhead to break the silence.
Dozens of survivors once joined memory of the year but attendance has dwindled as they have survived. Only 16 are still living today, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, president of the California State Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Military historian J. Michael Wenger estimates that there were about 87,000 troops on Oahu on the day of the attack.
Many consider the Pearl Harbor survivors heroes, but Fernandez doesn’t see himself that way.
“I’m not a hero. I’m just an ammunition passer,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from California, where he now lives with his nephew in Lodi.
Fernandez was working as a mess cook aboard his ship, the USS Curtiss, on the morning of December 7, 1941, and planned to go dancing that night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.
He brought the sailors coffee and food while they waited tables at breakfast. Then they heard an alarm sound. From a vantage point, Fernandez spotted a plane with the red ball insignia painted on Japanese planes.
Fernandez went down on three decks to a magazine room, where he and other sailors waited for someone to unlock a door that held 5-inch (12.7 cm) 38-caliber shells so they could begin feeding them to the ship’s guns.
He has told interviewers over the years that some of his sailors were praying and crying when they heard gunshots overhead.
“I felt a little scared because I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Fernandez said.
The ship’s gunboats hit a Japanese plane, which crashed into one of its cranes. Soon after, her guns struck an underwater explosive device, which then hit the ship and exploded below deck, setting the hangar and main deck ablaze, according to the Navy’s History and Heritage Command.
Fernandez’s ship, the Curtiss, lost 21 men and nearly 60 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 a war.”
After the attack, Fernandez had to clean up the debris. That night, he stood guard with a rifle to make sure no one tried to board. When it was time to rest, he fell asleep where the dead on board lay. He only realized it when a fellow sailor woke him up and told him.
After the war, Fernandez worked as a forklift driver in 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 a stepdaughter are deceased.
He has traveled to Hawaii three times to participate in the Pearl Harbor commemoration. This year would be his fourth trip.
Fernandez still enjoys music and goes to a nearby restaurant once a week to dance if he can. His favorite tune is Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “All of Me,” a song his nephew Joe Guthrie said he still knows by heart.
“Ladies flock to him like moths to fire,” Guthrie said.
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Associated Press reporter Terry Chea contributed to this report from Lodi, California.
