Pearl Harbor survivor recalls attack

FAIRBORN, Ohio (WDTN) - Rolla Malan looks through his pictures.

Memories that seem like a lifetime ago.

"I just wonder where some of the guys are," says Malan.

The 92-year-old says he's forgotten a lot but one day he will always remember is December 7th, 1941.

"We sat there and watched and couldn't believe it.  Plane come by on one side, it was Japanese.  You could see the pilot.  You could've hit him with a potato if you had a potato.  A plane came down along that side of the bird and somebody shot him down," explains Malan.

Malan was a 21-year-old serving in the US Navy aboard the USS Preble, stationed at Pearl Harbor.  He was responsible from dropping mines in enemy waters.

He says everything happened so fast.

"High-flying bombers, we saw them.  And, they dropped their bombs and we watched them almost all the way down, you could see them glow in the sun.   The next thing you know the Arizona blew and that was just an explosion.  I still think I saw bodies flying in the air," he recalls.

Images that still haunt him.

He says it was chaos and he was just, "trying to stay out of harm's way was the main thing, didn't know where to go.  You went in there you could get bombed.  You go out here, you could get shot and I didn't want either one of them."

Malan lost many friends and fellow seamen that day.

He doesn't know how he survived.

"2,000 killed on Pearl Harbor Day and I escaped and I don't know.  So many died that had families and I didn't.  I couldn't figure out why I would get out of there alive and none of them wouldn't," he comments.

For the world and especially for him, it's a date that will live in infamy.

Malan says it taught him, "that we're not invincible. We think we are and to be prepared.  Like Teddy Roosevelt said 'walk softly but carry a big stick.' and I think that's what we ought to do."

Malan continued serving in the Navy until 1945. 

He then moved to Fairborn, where he's lived ever since.