Bay Area Survivors Recount Pearl Harbor Bombing

From the Dec. 5, 2014, ABC San Francisco News by Eric Thomas.

Two Bay Area men are part of the dwindling group of Pearl Harbor survivors.

Richard "Johnny" Johnson, of Lafayette was a young sailor on the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco and looking forward to a day at the beach when the attack came.  He recalls, "And I saw these airplanes coming over the mountainsides and they're all lined up and they are moving kind of slow, but there are so many airplanes flying around Hawaii anyway that it didn't really mean much at first."

"Two bombs dropped on the Arizona and it began smoking."

John Tait, of Concord, was below deck on the cruiser USS St. Louis when the ship's skipper decided to get out of Pearl Harbor and into deeper water for maneuvering.

There was a two man submarine waiting for a ship and they fired two torpedoes at us, but there was a coral reef between us so the coral reef took the hit."

He went on to say the ship was at sea for three days after that chasing reported Japanese sightings.  Then, they returned to a scene of carnage in the harbor.  "We just didn't think the Japanese would be that bold to come all that way.  We thought we were impregnable."

After the war, Tait and his family were stationed in Japan for three years and got along well with the Japanese people, "they're a wonderful people and its their warlords and our warlords I don't like."

--GreGen