Follow Up on Howard Bender: Only Torrance Man to Survive

From the Dec. 8, 2014, AXS "Pearl Harbor survivors attend memorial ceremony aboard USS Iowa."

With the older blog entries, I sometimes do a search to see if the people I wrote about are still alive.  I did so with Howard Bender and am happy to report that as of this past Pearl Harbor Day he was still alive.

Howard Bender, 92, turns 93 on January 22.  He was an 18-year-old Yeoman 3rd Class Petty Officer on the USS Maryland in the attack..

He was joined by another Pearl Harbor survivor, Nelson G. Mitchell, Jr., who will be 85 on January 19th. When the attack came he was a 21-year-old Steward Mate 1st Class on the destroyer USS Jarvis DD-393.

Mr. Bender remembers: "I was on watch in the evening.  Myself and three other men from the City of Torrance in 1940 were taken down to San Diego and trained to the Pacific Fleet.  Those three men were on the Arizona and I was the only one from Torrance that came back alive."

Glad To Know He's Still Alive.  --GreGen