Hospitalized Veterans Remember Attack on Pearl Harbor
December 7, 2007

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Pearl Harbor Survivors Will Share Their Stories

Phoenix College Band will Present Special Program Morning of Dec. 7

(PHOENIX) Garth Brown, Sr., and Ranald Ferguson, both Pearl Harbor survivors, will share their stories and photos over coffee at 10 a.m. in the dining room of the Nursing Home Care Unit (NHCU) at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Phoenix.

At 10:30 a.m., the Phoenix College Band will present a musical salute, "Music, Words and War" in the NHCU dining room. About 20 members of the Phoenix College Band will perform popular music from WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, interspersed with historical audio clips from those eras.

Media can access the dining room through the NHCU Entrance to the VA Medical Center on the west side of Seventh Street, just north of Indian School Road.

Brown and Ferguson are patients of the VA Medical Center, and are among a dwindling number of veterans who survived the attack on the naval base in Hawaii, which propelled the United States into World War II.

Brown survived the sinking of the USS Oklahoma, in which more than 400 men died when the battleship capsized. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, she was hit by Japanese torpedoes, which tore open much of her port side. As Brown prepared to jump into the water, the ship capsized, throwing him clear, but the turbulence created by the ship's rapid sinking held him underwater. He finally fought his way to the surface and was rescued. Brown later survived the sinking of two more ships during his Navy service.

More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, with nearly 1,200 military and civilian personnel wounded. In addition, 21 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were damaged or destroyed.