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.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Pearl Harbor Survivor Raymond Salsedo Planning to Return for 75th Anniversary

From the KSL.com "Pearl Harbor survivor plans to return to Hawaii 75 years after attack" by Mark Glaugun.

Raymond Salsedo was a civilian worker in Pearl harbor that day, working in the drydock where the destroyers USS Cassin and Downes were being repaired.

He recalled: "All I hear was these boys in the drydock.  Nineteen, 20-year-old boys, sailors.  They were just hollering, 'Mother, mother, mother.'""

He had trained as a diver and underwater welder and was assigned to cut holes in the USS Oklahoma's overturned hull.  Eleven men were rescued out of his hole of the 32 total saved that way.

At home that night, he worried about another attack and built a small bomb shelter.  The next day he began work on removing the Arizona's guns.

--GreGen

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