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Ex-Sailor Recalls Losing Brother in Pearl Harbor Attack : Survivors to Hold Service at Sunken Battleship Arizona

Associated Press

On Dec. 7, 1941, Harlan C. Christensen was standing on the quarterdeck of the battleship Arizona, waiting for his brother.

“We were going to take pictures to send back home,” Christensen recalled Friday. “He hollered at me that he forgot something and was going back to his forward quarters to get it.”

Christensen never saw his brother again. Moments later, Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor, and the huge battleship quickly sank.

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Escaped Through Turret

“When the attack began, I went to my station at the No. 4 powder magazine,” Christensen said. “When the ship sank, I was able to get out through the No. 3 gun turret. We couldn’t swim because fuel was burning all around us in the water. Finally, the captain’s boat picked us up and took us to Ford Island.”

Christensen, who retired last year as chief of police in Columbus, Kan., is one of 11 Arizona survivors who will participate in a special ceremony Sunday on the 45th anniversary of the attack.

“Coming back here has a lot of special meaning,” Christensen said. “My mother and father were never able to come here, so everything I do here is for my parents.”

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Victims Still Entombed

Three services are scheduled aboard the Arizona Memorial to commemorate the attack and pay tribute to the victims, including the 1,107 still entombed in the Arizona’s sunken hull.

The Navy’s tribute will include a moment of silence throughout the Pearl Harbor Naval Base at 7:55 a.m., the time the attack began. Later in the day, the Arizona survivors will hold a service, and the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn. will hold a sunset service.

Each year, an estimated 1.4 million people visit the Arizona Memorial, taking a seven-minute boat ride across Pearl Harbor to see the wreckage from a gleaming monument built across its submerged hull.

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There are other reminders of the attack.

World War II-era steel obstacles intended to stop attacking amphibious landing craft have only recently been removed from near the harbor entrance, and the wreckage of the battleship Utah, decommissioned at the time of the attack, also lies at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

Fifty-eight men aboard the Utah died that morning; 461 escaped.

From almost anywhere on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, it is easy to see Kolekole Pass, the verdant, saddle-like trough in the Waianae Mountains west of Pearl Harbor through which slipped one group of Japanese Zeros on their way to the attack.

In late 1941, the United States had not yet joined World War II but was uneasily monitoring Japan’s militarist expansion in the Far East.

Target Was U.S. Fleet

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was an attempt to cripple the United States’ Pacific Fleet as an adversary. Over several hours, Japanese bombing runs destroyed or damaged 18 warships, destroyed 170 planes and killed 2,403 people.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately declared war on Japan, branding Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.”

Off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla., on Friday, several hundred people participated in the Navy’s only Pearl Harbor memorial service on the East Coast.

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About 160 guests, including 14 survivors of the attack, joined 200 crew members of the guided missile frigate Boone in ceremonies that included casting wreaths into the Atlantic Ocean.

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