101-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor, other veterans attend ceremony remembering historic day
Fox News
U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class David Russell, who is now 101 years old, survived on the USS Oklahoma when Japanese bombs began falling on Pearl Harbor, and he is returning to the historic site to pay respects to those who lost their lives 80 years ago.
"They started closing that hatch. And I decided to get out of there," Russell, now 101, said in a recent interview.
Within 12 minutes his battleship would capsize under a barrage of torpedoes. 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.
Russell plans to return to Pearl Harbor on Tuesday for a ceremony in remembrance of the more than 2,300 American troops killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that launched the U.S. into World War II.