Sterling Cale, a surivor of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, speaks to sailors near the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 2013. (Johans Chavarro/U.S. Navy)
Two survivors of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 died in recent days, one of whom had attended the 82nd annual commemoration of the attack in Hawaii in early December.
Edward Carroll, who celebrated his 99th birthday last week in Long Beach, Calif., died Tuesday morning, the nonprofit Pacific Historic Parks announced the same day on X, formerly Twitter.
Carroll, who lived in Kanosh, Utah, was one of only five survivors to attend the December ceremony.
Sterling Cale, 102, a longtime Hawaii resident, died Jan. 20 surrounded by his family at his home just west of Honolulu, the organization announced Wednesday.
Cale, a veteran of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, was hospitalized last month for unspecified conditions, according to the post by Pacific Parks, for which Cale had been a longtime volunteer.
Cale had been set to attend the December ceremony but was forced to cancel at the last minute due to health issues.
On the morning of the Dec. 7, 1941, Cale had just left his overnight shift as a hospital corpsman at the Pearl Harbor dispensary, according to his book, “Sterling Cale: A True American.”
Cale tells of hearing gunfire and seeing smoke, which he initially regarded as part of a training exercise.
The reality dawned on him after he saw the Rising Sun flag on the fuselage of one the planes flying overhead.
Cale worked at pulling dozens of men out of the harbor waters, ablaze with burning fuel and oil.
In coming days, he was assigned to remove the remains of sailors and Marines who died aboard the USS Arizona.
In his book, Cale explained why he was reluctant to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, doing so only in 1974, 12 years after it had opened.
“I didn’t want to reflect,” he wrote. “I knew I would recognize many of the names on the wall and wondered about what happened to them. Pearl Harbor haunted me, but I did my best to put it behind me, focus on the present and be positive about everything.”
Funeral services for Cale are scheduled for March 7 at Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe. He will be buried beside his wife, Victoria, who died in 2019.
Survivor Edward Carroll attends the 82nd commemoration of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 2023, in Hawaii. (Pacific Historic Parks )
Carroll enlisted in the Navy in April 1941, and was a top student at the Aviation Mechanic School, Pacific Historic Parks said in its post.
He was only 16 years old when he arrived in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 4, 1941, assigned to a crew that would be testing a new model of plane being sent to Hawaii.
He was sleeping in his quarters on Ford Island when the attack began.
“The first thing I really saw was all the airplanes,” Carroll told KHON-TV in Honolulu during an interview in December.
“Thousands of them it looked like. Looked like a swarm of mosquitoes. And the man handed me a rifle and said go shoot. But what are you gonna do with a rifle against an airplane?”
He manned a sandbag post with that rifle.
Later in the war while flying a PBY Catalina near Guadalcanal, Carroll was shot down. He and the other 21 crew members all survived the crash. They were rescued after five hours in the water.
He was discharged from the Navy in 1945.
