Ninety five year old Harold J. Douglas, was a Sergeant for the Fourth Marine Division during World War Two. Graduating in high-school in 1939, he was 20 years old during World War Two. On this day seventy five years ago, Douglas was stationed at Black Port Washington. Weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, he stood guard on the USS Arizona, a ship that sunk on this day.
“I had walked around, and around, on that turret, gun turret, you feel kind of funny to realize it had sunk in Pearl Harbor, and will probably never be raised,” Douglas said.
Following the attack he headed back over the ocean and shipped out with the Fourth Marine Division, as they made their landing in the Marshall Islands, Marianas, and Iwo Jima. Out of the 150 fellow Marines in his rifle company, 71 died at war. Twenty five years ago Douglas and his wife took a trip to the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii, where he got to see where the Arizona sank.
“It was rather nostalgic for me to go 50 years later, and walk around Honolulu and places I had been as a young man, at 20 years old,” Douglas said.
Raising his children in Lubbock, Douglas said it was the love from his beautiful wife and family that allowed him to grow past the war and put it behind him. He has always kept a positive attitude. Losing his wife a few weeks back was hard for him, but he said he enjoys having coffee with his friends every morning. Douglas said it’s hard to grasp how dangerous things were 75 years ago.
“There’s no relating to it now, because here we are warm and comfortable, life is good, and you cant think about how it was then, even I cant think about it, and I was there,” Douglas said.