Wisconsin Navy veteran who survived Pearl Harbor attack dies at age 104

Rolland Briar, who survived the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, died Saturday in Green Bay, Wis. He was 104.

Briar, who will be buried with full military honors this weekend, was among about a dozen remaining veterans of the Dec. 7 attack that drew the United States into World War II.

He was aboard the destroyer tender USS Whitney AD-4 when the morning attack commenced.

He was working as a staff member for the admiral commanding Pacific Fleet destroyers, Briar said in a Dec. 6, 2008, interview with the National Museum of the Pacific War.

Because Briar was not a part of the ship’s permanent company, he did not have an assigned battle station.

He was on the tender’s deck awaiting a motor launch to take him to nearby Ford Island for church services when Japanese planes began strafing the Whitney. Briar and other flag staffers were ordered below deck.

“Because I was with ‘flag allowance,’ we had no battle stations,” he said in the interview.

Briar described “just a lot of noise and confusion.” From below deck they heard the massive explosion from the USS Arizona when a bomb ignited its forward powder magazines, he said.

As the attack ended, Briar said he saw that the Catholic Church he’d planned to attend was destroyed.

The Whitney was largely undamaged in the attack.

For the next month he helped reassign survivors to other ships.

Briar subsequently became an officer and served at the naval air station on Saipan until July 1946.

Briar was born April 15, 1922, in Marinette, Wis. He enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school in 1940.

After leaving the Navy he worked as an accountant.

His funeral is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Green Bay, according to the Proko-Wall Funeral Home website. He will be interred at Allouez Chapel Mausoleum.