Survivor marks 70th anniversary of ‘Day of Infamy’

Sailors were getting ready for church aboard the USS Tennessee on that calm Sunday morning. It was just a few minutes before 8 a.m.

Then all hell broke loose.

Dec. 7, 1941. The day America was attacked. “We heard the zinging and zanging” of shrapnel, said Raymond Brittain, 90, of Powell, a survivor of Pearl Harbor, in a previous interview with the Tribune.

It was 7:50 a.m. when the USS West Virginia took eight torpedoes in her side. The West Virginia was anchored right next to the Tennessee.

“There was such an explosion,” said Brittain.

Many might not realize Pearl Harbor is extremely shallow. Brittain said the water turned instantly muddy when the torpedoes began slamming into the Navy fleet in the harbor.

Brittain, 20 at the time, was below deck when the first wave came. They were rigging the deck for church services.

“They were getting ready to raise the flag on the stern,” he said.

His job was a fire controlman — aiming the guns at incoming planes — and it was an important job that morning.

With bombs going off and pandemonium ruling the atmosphere, the sailors still had their jobs to do.

“There were 200 in the first wave,” said Brittain.

His crew was credited with eliminating four to six Japanese planes.

But they weren’t thinking about numbers on that morning. Living was more important.

Living, though, would come at a high price.

Death was all around that day.

The Tennessee was anchored on “battleship row.” He said 15 to 16 inch shells were slamming into the ships. They took the Arizona down pretty quickly. So went the West Virginia, too. Brittain watched it turn over in the shallow harbor.

He knew many men were never going to leave the ship. They would be entombed — killed during a surprise attack nobody ever thought would happen.

Brittain said he had trained for his gunnery position a few weeks prior to the attack. They had trained hard, he said.

Brittain thinks someone knew something might happen. A senior sailor even wondered why they were practicing so much.

But nobody thought it was going to happen that day at Pearl Harbor.

“It was shock,” said Brittain.

The first wave of Japanese planes was 183 strong. The second wave had 170. Brittain said if there would have been a third wave, America might not have had any ships left in the fleet.

There were 2,400 Americans who died that day in Pearl Harbor. More than 220 aircraft were destroyed and eight battleships were damaged or destroyed.

“It was a matter of keeping alive,” said Brittain. “The fires and explosions went on all day long.”

Brittain suffered a broken leg and ankle during one of the explosions. But he worked 12 hours on deck that day before going to the infirmary.

Even when he got there, it didn’t take him long to realize there were so many wounded, many badly burned, that getting treatment would be difficult. He ended up being handed a roll of tape, and he taped up his own leg.

The memories of that attack came back to the forefront for Brittain on Sept. 11, 2001.

“It was a sad, sad thing,” he said of the terrorist assault on the United States.

Brittain moved to Powell a decade ago to be closer to his family. Since that time, he has returned to Pearl Harbor. Last year, he was there for the dedication of the USS Arizona Memorial Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. In 2009, Brittain took honor flight to visit the national World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, the 70th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Brittain recalled the 2,400 Americans who were killed at Pearl Harbor. They sacrificed their lives, their futures and their dreams.

“Our average age was 19 years old,” he said. “Very few sailors in that time — 1941 — were married, and nobody left any offspring, because in those days, you didn’t have any children unless you were married.”

Brittain said he was surprised to be around to witness the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor — but no more surprised than he was just to live through that attack.

“I never expected to survive that particular morning, let alone live 70 years afterward,” he said. “When my battleship got under way when we left Pearl to go up for repairs in Bremerton, Washington, a lot of us asked ourselves, ‘How come we survived that attack, when we were faced with absolutely being killed?’

“I just consider myself lucky to be around this long,” he said.

Brittain urges Americans to take the Pearl Harbor survivors’ motto to heart: “Remember Pearl Harbor, Keep America Alert.”

“We were not alert when we were attacked by Japan,” he said Wednesday. “Not one time did I hear a single word of Japan mentioned. It was just all about Germany and Hitler.

“We want to keep this country from going into another world war. I’m not a war monger. I don’t like war at all, after going through it. Don’t let it happen again.”

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