USS Arizona Survivor Donald Stratton: "Maybe You Don't Know the Feeling..."

From the Dec. 7, 2012, KRDO Radio, Colorado Springs.

Donald Stratton has a momento of the USS Arizona, a part of a 20-foot gun section and is one of only a handful of survivors of the gallant USS Arizona who are still alive.

He has an action figured named after him.

He remembers his ship firing at the Japanese planes: "We couldn't fire toward the sub base because another ship was in the way.  We couldn't fire back in our direction because we would have fired on our own superstructure.  We fired at high altitude bombers.

"We got hit by a big bomb.  A little more than a million pounds of ammo exploded.  The explosion was horrendous.  A fireball went up for six hundred feet in the air.  It engulfed us where we were at.  The Arizona burned for about three and a half days."

Mr. Stratton received severe burns on his legs and arms and lost part of his ear and nose.  He was hospitalized for a year and returned to duty.

A few weeks ago, he was honored at a home Denver Broncos game.

He went back to the 70th anniversary commemoration in Pearl Harbor last year: "One of the things that hit me is to be back 70 years later and raise the flag over the ship with all my shipmates still aboard.  It was kind of, well you know.  Maybe you don't know the feeling, I do!"

--GreGen