This browser does not support the Video element.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Dec. 7 is forever circled on the calendar as the date that changed the course of history, as grandparents always remember where they were when they heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Today’s generation doesn’t have that direct tie, which is why veterans groups are still working to honor, remember and cherish the sacrifices made that day so that the country never forgets.
America’s date in infamy still burns in the consciousness of the nation 77 years later. The flags of our fathers still honor the men who served and survived Pearl Harbor.
“Well, I was lucky,” said Dick Thill, a Pearl Harbor survivor.
“It was plenty happening all of those planes coming,” he said. “I didn’t think there would ever be an end to them.”
Just an hour before the threat from the skies, the U.S.S. Ward attacked a threat in the water. It discovered a mini submarine trying to enter the harbor. The Ward steamed up right next to it.
Thilll says that moment was the trouble because the main deck cannon couldn’t drop low enough to strike the sub, but the number three gun fired a direct hit.
That gun from the U.S.S. Ward now stands at the Capitol grounds in St. Paul as a tribute to the Minnesota men who served in Pearl Harbor.
That’s because many of the sailors manning the Ward were reservists from St. Paul.
“The kids that were manning that ship were brave, courageous and very mature for their age,” said Dick Klobuchar, a U.S.S. Ward Historian and Author. “It speaks well for Minnesota.”
It’s a story Klobuchar says is not repeated enough.
“It’s something that Minnesota really has to know about,” he said. “There were a lot of people here I can imagine that didn’t know the story of the Ward. I hope they know a little more now.”
The U.S.S. Ward was hit by a Kamakazi plane three years to the day after Pearl Harbor. The commanding officer of a nearby destroyer, Captain William Outerbridge, ordered the scuttling of the Ward.
He was Ward’s captain when it fired the first shots of the war 77 years ago Friday.