DENVER (AP) – The stench and the heroism are what Jim Doyle remembers the most about that fateful day 74 years ago when Japan laid waste to Pearl Harbor, the attack that launched America into World War II.
The horrid smell came from the charred bodies of the dead sailors, soldiers and others floating in the sea water just after Japanese bombers bombed the American fleet in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.
“Oil and slime were all over their bodies,” said Doyle, 92, and one of two Colorado Pearl Harbor survivors honored Monday at a ceremony at the Leyden-Chiles-Wickersham American Legion Post 1. “It was something I will never get out of my mind.”
Doyle also recalls the gunners who, while under withering attack, took to their anti-aircraft weapons and tried to take out as many Japanese pilots as they could.
“They took out 32 Japanese planes that day, they were incredible under fire,” said Doyle.
Doyle, who lied about his age and joined the Navy in 1939 when he was 16, grabbed a camera and took photos of the attack and aftermath. Some of his photos are still considered some of the most iconic of Pearl Harbor.
Doyle, who was an aerial photographer’s mate 1st Class when Pearl Harbor was attacked, offered a salute to his departed countrymen as did Luz Valerio, 97 during the ceremony. Valerio, a U.S. Army veteran, manned a seacoast gun battery during the Japanese bombing.
