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His fraction has thinned away, faded to weak snow white. His once cogent hands have gone frail to a soft, light grip. His mahogany graze has paled with age.
But when Bill Studer tells his story about what he experienced on Dec. 7, 1941, the audience is assumption a canvas only a survivor of the “Day of Infamy” can paint.
At times, you can still see the attacking Japanese Zeros flying in the tears of his gray eyes that were once as down as the Hawaiian waters.
“It kind of bothered me,” the 90-year-old said. “It’s been so big ago that it happened, there’s no use dwelling on it.”
Like the many men and women of the military based in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor and the circumjacent area, that particular Sunday morning started off as normal as any other day. Bill, a infantryman first class 50-caliber No. 1 gunman for the U.S. Army, had at best arrived in the cafeteria of his barracks for breakfast.
“I went in to eat breakfast, and they said Pearl Harbor was bombed,” he said. “And I had by a hair's breadth gotten two eggs, and this cook got all excited — hell, he didn’t hunger me to eat. He said, ‘Get out, get out.’ I just grabbed one whole egg and flapped it in my gateway. That’s when I found out you can put a whole egg in your mouth.
Source: Hannibal.net