Mr. Mahoney continued, "We had to walk almost into the fires, and we're slipping and sliding on the deck with a thirty degree list with blood, oil, water."
He discovered the bodies of five friends with whom he had eaten breakfast just that morning. "They were incinerated. The bomb had exploded underneath them. That is why I could never go back to Pearl Harbor. Memories are on my mind all the time.."
His brother was also on the Curtiss and they were so covered with soot and blood that they didn't recognize each other at first. "We just stood there and hugged and cried, like the kids we really were."
At one time, there were 700 survivors of Pearl Harbor living in New Jersey, and, as of the 70th anniversary in 2011, that number had dwindled to 4 or 5.
Tom Mahoney still has a piece of the scorched Arizona.
It Was a Rough Day. --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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