80 Years On, the Told and Untold Pearl Harbor Stories-- Part 3: Eugene Marchand, Survivor

Some of the 40 Pearl Harbor survivors have told their stories.  Others may not have.  It is a personal decision and often a hard one.

Horror is hard to repeat.

This was the case with Eugene Marchand, one of the survivors no longer with us.    A few years before his death, with the 60th anniversary approaching, he told in an interview with the Sun Chronicle that for many years after the war he could not bring himself to buy anything made in Japan.

At the time, he was a carpenter's mate  first class  on the destroyer USS Cassin, in drydock.  It was hit by bombs.  He wasn't on board at the time, but in a naval hospital recovering from appendicitis.

He watched the attack from the hospital roof and what he was seeing defied any description.  He could see the chaos in front of him and hear the hundreds of wounded below him in pain and agony.

--GreGen