It was an early morning on December 7th, 1941 when my life got turned around. It was a great morning to test all of our weaponry when a detector of an aerial assault came in. When the captain heard about it he thought that it was just the airforce practicing. So as the at least an hour past the captain got another call but by then it was too late. When the first bomb hit one of the boats, men were running to their positions to defend their boats. When all of a sudden with my own eye I saw a bomb miss the boat, I thought that they have just misinterpreted where the boat was going to be but later did I know that was exactly what they wanted. Right, when the bomb hit the water it took off straight for the USS Neosho. This wasn’t one of the bigger boats but it still had a big impact on what happened. That boat particularly was carrying about 15,000 pounds of explosives. So when that bomb hit a big explosion went off. Even though from the USS Arizona I couldn’t see the explosion I could feel it. When the waves started to hit where I was the whole boat started rocking back and forth which messed up what we're trying to do. When I finally got to my station on the bridge of the boat I had to command who and what the other men had to do. When I finally got somewhere where I could see everything I was in shock. I was able to see where the bombs would hit and when they would, and this was painful to watch. When all of a sudden the USS Arizona, my ship got hit. We were carrying about 500,000 pounds of explosives and 1.5 million pounds of oil. I knew that we were about to be in a battle and that I couldn’t watch the other ships that I need to focus on mine. Also, the Japanese knew the USS Arizona would be the ship they needed to take down if they wanted to win this. When the first plane came down it was right next to the bridge and it happened to miss the boat as well. But the Japanese knew that if they were able to sneak another 2 bombs in that they would be able to blow the whole place up. So I knew that I needed to protect all the people here and around us. So I made a bold move and told them to pick up the anchor and move 20 yards forward to the Japanese were not able to realize how much their bombs would then miss by. When I made this command the Japanese weren’t ready. They missed the ship about 10 times. This move was a great one, but then General John said “Another fleet was coming in, and that the other fighter jets have told them that we have changed this position.” when I heard this I knew what we had to do. We needed to move all the ships closer to land and evacuate. When I pitched this idea to General John he told me that it would take too long and if we tried to that they would find out and just bomb the land to keep us from getting out. We needed to fight. This was our only chance to stay alive. When General John got the call that the second fleet of Japanese fighters came in and they knew what we were trying to do.  So they decided to break up, and circle around all of the ships! When they went into this formation we had no chance but to abandon ship. But we all decided to stay on and do the either the best decision ever or the worst. We all went down to where all the bombs were and we decided to try to push them all back. One by one we all as a team decided to push them all to one side, even though the ship would then be leaned toward one side. The bombs were then not going to hit the bombs but only the ship. This was good for about another 3 minutes. Then they found out that if they just hit the bombs from the other side and when they finally found that out they all knew to go to the USS Arizona. When we started to see all of the planes close in on this one ship we knew that if we didn’t get to land safely we would all be dead. So that's exactly what we did. We all abandoned ship and got in boats but as we were leaving we could still see all of the other ships that had some fight left in them, but one by one they all went down. Even from the boat that we were in you could see the people that decided to jump off the ship and try to swim to safety. As we went by you could hear and feel the explosion of the biggest ship in the world. The heat of the boat was unbearable that some of the soldier's skin started to burn off. The amount of oil in the little area was amazing as well, all the boats got filled up for there descends today to go out to the ocean and patrol the area. December 7th, 1941 was the day that all men and women in the navy would go off. Only if we left the day before we would have been able to stop them before they would be able to bomb the land and our ships. When everyone that had survived got back to land we needed a head count. Since the general had lost his life, the next position up was me. This was because I was apart of the USS Arizona and that was the highest ship and I was the second highest rank. I needed to take a count of how many people were here.

“Captain Joe, how many from your boat have made it?” I ask,

“We have a grand total of 4 sirs, a lot of my men are missing though, they might show up if they can swim through.”

“That’s not happening, they can’t swim through all of the oil here, and if they do and they get just a little in there mouth or eyes or consume it in any way they will die and have no chance.”

“Captain Ken?”

“Sir, captain Ken has died in battle and I am the only to survive.”

“Ok then, we will have to then promote you, What is your name?”

“On my ship, they called me Ty, but my real name is Tyler.”

“Ok, we have to tell general back on the homeland that we have a new captain.”

“Sir, just to let you know all 28 ships around me have so survivors, they all went down in one shot. They had no chance and four of them were medical ships.”

“Then we will just have to wait here until we can get some help if all of those ships have gone.” still from here, you could feel the fire of all the ships burning in the little area that they were all docked. Unfortunately, we all had to wait for people to come and help us. But for that time being, we had to live off what we had. And what we had wasn’t a lot, and since we were on the islands of Hawaii I sent out people to get food, but when they got back they said that the army planes have landed and that we were finally saved.