PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii – Ira “Ike” Schab, a 104-year-old Pearl Harbor attack survivor, was so determined to stand and salute during a remembrance ceremony honoring those killed in the Japanese bombing that thrust the U.S. into World War II some 83 years ago that he spent six weeks in physical therapy to build the strength to do so.
On Saturday, Schab gingerly rose from his wheelchair and raised his right hand, returning a salute delivered by sailors on a destroyer and a submarine passing by in the harbor. His son and a daughter supported him from either side.
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“I was honored to do it. I’m glad I was capable of standing up,” he said afterward. “I’m getting old, you know.”
Schab is one of only two servicemen who lived through the attack who made it to an annual observance hosted by the U.S. Navy and National Park Service on a grass field overlooking the harbor. A third survivor had been planning to join them but had to cancel because of health issues.
The Dec. 7, 1941, bombing killed more than 2,300 U.S. servicemen. Nearly half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines on board the USS Arizona, which sank during the battle. The remains of more than 900 Arizona crew members are still entombed on the submerged vessel.
Dozens of survivors once joined the event but their attendance has declined as survivors have aged. Today there are only 16 still living, according to a list maintained by Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Military historian J. Michael Wenger has estimated there were some 87,000 military personnel on Oahu on the day of the attack.
Schab agreed when ceremony organizers asked him earlier this year to salute on behalf of all survivors and World War II veterans.
“He’s been working hard, because this is his goal,” said his daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs, who traveled to Hawaii with Schab from their Beaverton, Oregon, home. “He wanted to be able to stand for that.”
Schab was a sailor on the USS Dobbin at the time of the attack, serving as the tuba player in the ship's band. He had showered and put on a clean uniform when he heard the call for a fire rescue party.
He hurried topside to see Japanese planes flying overhead and the USS Utah capsizing. He quickly went back below deck to join a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun topside.
Ken Stevens, 102, who served on the USS Whitney, joined Schab at the ceremony. USS Curtiss sailor Bob Fernandez, 100, was unable to come due to health issues.
Attendees observed a moment of silence at 7:54 a.m., the same time the attack began eight decades ago. F-22 jets in missing man formation flew overhead shortly after.
Fernandez, speaking in a phone interview from California, where he lives with his nephew in Lodi, recalled feeling shocked and surprised as the attack began.
“When those things go off like that, we didn’t know what’s what,” Fernandez said. “We didn’t even know we were in a war.”
Fernandez was a mess cook on the Curtiss and his job that morning was to bring sailors coffee and food as he waited tables during breakfast. Then they heard an alarm sound. Through a porthole, Fernandez saw a plane with the red ball insignia painted on Japanese aircraft fly by.
Fernandez rushed down three decks to a magazine room where he and other sailors waited for someone to unlock a door storing 5-inch (12.7-centimeter), 38-caliber shells so they could begin passing them to the ship's guns.
He has told interviewers over the years that some of his fellow sailors were praying and crying as they heard gunfire up above.
“I felt kind of scared because I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Fernandez said.
The ship's guns hit a Japanese plane that crashed into one of its cranes. Shortly after, its guns hit a dive bomber that then slammed into the ship and exploded below deck, setting the hangar and main decks on fire, according to the Navy History and Heritage Command.
Fernandez's ship, the Curtiss, lost 21 men and nearly 60 of its sailors were injured.
Many laud Pearl Harbor survivors as heroes, but Fernandez doesn’t view himself that way.
“I’m not a hero,” he said. “I’m just nothing but an ammunition passer.”
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Associated Press journalist Terry Chea contributed from Lodi, California.