The 47th observance of Pearl Harbor Day, last Wednesday, Dec. 7, was a memorial one for John and Eda Grand Pre of Forest Lane. They were present at the first ceremony to honor the USS Oklahoma, one of the first ships to go down in the surprise Japanese attack that precipitated United States entry into World War II.

Chief Warrant Officer/Retired Grand Pre was aboard at the time, as was his brother Arthur. He escaped; his brother was one of the 448 members who did not.

The dedication ceremony drew some 120 survivors of the sinking and their relatives from all parts of the country. It took place in Oklahoma City on the steps of the State Museum of History, with the governor and high ranking military men in attendance, the keynote address was delivered by admiral William, Crowe, chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Every man was a hero," Admiral Crowe said, Praising the crew’s record of getting back into action as soon as possible. Roger Fensler, a member of the ship’s marines and head of the USS Oklahoma Association, said, "A ship isn’t just a piece of steel floating in the Pacific or the Atlantic. A ship takes on life like a human being." The Oklahoma was a friendly ship...we treated it as our home." Their statements were reported in the Oklahoma newspapers.

Included are the ship’s silver service and aft steering wheel, a piece of its decking, photographs recording its 25-year history.

The Oklahoma was Mr. Grand Pre’s first ship. He joined the Navy right after his 18th birthday in November 1940. "I signed on for six years," he said "and stayed for 20."

After his duty at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station he was assigned to the Oklahoma, stationed at Pearl Harbor. He went aboard January 1941, joining his brother Arthur, who had enlisted the summer before. They had almost a year of Navy life together. The ship returned from maneuvers to Pearl Harbor on the evening of Dec. 6.

Mr. Grand Pre said all enlisted were aboard that night, a half-day liberty scheduled for the following day beginning at 8 in the morning. The Japanese launched their attack " just before 8," he remembered.

"I was in the living compartment on the second deck, one below the main, when the alarm sounded. Almost immediately we started taking hits."

The Oklahoma, he said, was moored next to the USS Maryland on the seaward side, so it took all the torpedoes. According to the records, it was the first ship hit in Battleship row where seven of the giants were moored beside Ford Island, In the center of the harbor. A total of seven torpedoes struck the Oklahoma. The first hit came at 7:57; by 8:05 the ship was upside down.

By the time he got to his battle station, Mr. Grand Pre said, the ship was taking water and listing and he was ordered to "dog down the hatches"’ and report back to the boiler room. He was a fireman, second class, at the time and his station was in the belly of the ship. "by the time we got back there, the order had been given to abandon ship," he said.

He and his shipmates made their way, in pitch darkness as the lights had gone with the first hit, to the upper decks. The ship was on its side. "The porthole in the engineers washroom was directly overhead," he said.

He remembers very clearly the big burly engineer who shouted "this way!" and boosted the men onto his shoulders and through the porthole. "He couldn’t make, he was too big. He went down with the ship." The man was honored posthumously, Mr. Grand Pre said, a destroyer escort was named after him, the Francis D. Day.

Once outside, he said, "We were standing on the side of the ship and she was still turning, and there was strafing." They dove about 30 feet into the water, "all oil and burning," and swam to Ford Island. The Maryland, he said, stayed where it was, blocked by the Oklahoma from getting underway during the attack.

"The attack lasted for an hour, coming in waves," he said. Afterward he asked if anybody had seen his brother and at first thought he was all right. "They got word to me the next day, when I was loading live ammunition on the ships still afloat. His death certificate says he had been strafed in the water."

He said a well-known director wanted to make a film of the escape and researched the whereabouts of the 32. As a result they were brought together for the first time two years ago for a reunion, a very tearful reunion, he said. He doesn’t know what happened for the plans for the film.

There were 1250 men on the Oklahoma. Of the 448 who died, 436 were trapped inside the ship Mr. Grand Pre said.

Mr. Grand Pre retired from the Navy in 1960 and has since worked for the Norden division of United Technologies and as a field service engineer with Peabody Engineering in Stanford. He retired again three years ago.

The Grand Pres are 28-year residents of town. They have two sons. Eugene, the oldest, is married to Janice Olmstead and works for C.R. Gibson in Norwalk. Paul, a 1973 Wilton High School graduate, is a magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College and the Amos Tuck Business School at Dartmouth, married to Laurie Hawkes, who was president of their graduating class at Bowdin. They both live in Bronxville, N.Y. and are both employed in the financial field, she with Salomon Brothers and he with Integral Resources, In New York City

The Grandpre family, like many on South Dakota farms, had fallen on hard times. Drought had ruined the wheat crop. Some days the family, with nine members, didn’t have enough food. And there were no other jobs around. Then, when John was a freshman in high school, the family lost the 1,700 acre farm. They packed up and moved to the small town of  Doland, SD. about eight miles away.

One of John’s brothers, Arthur, found a way out of the poverty. He joined the Navy and was eventually assigned to the USS Oklahoma. His $21-a-month salary, plus free room and board, were looking good to both John and his parents, who were getting $5 a month in the mail from Arthur. So John joined up too and asked to be stationed with his brother. The request was approved.

A year later on a beautiful Honolulu morning, John, then 19, was preparing to go ashore on liberty in his white shorts and T-shirt, most likely for a splash at the waterfall where he and his bunkmates liked to relax.

Then the Japanese planes appeared, the first of 353 coming off six aircraft carriers. Within minutes, half the Navy’s fleet was in flames. One of the first ships hit was the Oklahoma.

Aboard the Oklahoma, the order came to abandon ship. The vessel was listing at a 90-degree angle, almost completely on its side. John had seen Arthur minutes before, but now his 21 year old brother was nowhere in sight; apparently he had gotten out alive.

But things didn’t look so good for John and about a dozen shipmates, who stood in the boiler control room looking up at an open hatchway that should have been on the wall but was now overhead eight feet high and out of reach.

Then the beefy arm of Francis Day, chief watertender, came plunging down through the hatchway. Day was a husky clean-shaven, round-faced man in his early 30s, weighing about 225 pounds and standing six foot three. He was so respected by the men that no one ever thought to give him a corny nickname. He was career Navy, with 14 to 15 years under his belt already.

Then the mighty Oklahoma went belly up. Only the 125-foot masts digging in the muddy bottom kept the ship from going completely under. In a miraculous rescue the next day 32 men were pulled out alive when a whole was cut through the side. Arthur was not among them John later learned that his brother had gotten off the Oklahoma, but was killed by a Japanese gunner strafing the water.

Day was also among the dead. Day would have been too smart to think he had any chance of fitting through a 14-inch porthole. He would have known from the start that saving the others would cost him his life

I can walk through the Punch Bowl Cemetery at Pearl Harbor and know at least 80 men that died whose names are carved on those marble slabs," he says.

A lot of hurt is gone, but not entirely. "Some Americans are not worried about the memory of those that lost their lives at Pearl Harbor. They just worry about offending the Japanese because of their money. Money talks.

At home recently, Grandpre decided against going to a nearby vigil commemorating the U. S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. "I knew I would get in trouble. I read that a person there of Japanese ancestry said he couldn’t understand why some people are still so bitter about Pearl Harbor this many years after it happened "If he had been there he would have known."

John soft spoken and humble, has granted many interviews to reporters recently because of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"That’s why I give interviews. Not for me but for the memory of the sacrifice my brother, Chief Day and all the men who died at Pearl Harbor gave to this country. And keep Americans alert for the future. People never learn and sure as hell, history repeats itself."