I was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I was a seventeen-year-old signalman aboard the USS Oklahoma. When the attack came, I was asleep in my bunk. The first thing I knew was the sound — this enormous roar, like the whole world was tearing apart. I ran topside and saw a Japanese plane so close I could see the pilot's face. He was young. He looked scared too. Then the torpedoes hit. The Oklahoma rolled over. I ended up in the water with oil all over me. I remember thinking: the water is warm. That's the thing I remember most — the water was warm. I got picked up by a destroyer that was itse...

They told us at boot camp: 'You're here because we need you, but nobody is going to admit it.' That was 1943. I was a radar operator at a station on Cape Cod — 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, watching a green screen for blips. We tracked German U-boats in the shipping lanes off Cape Cod. Yes, U-boats. In American waters. In 1944. Most people don't know that. I saw blips every week. We coordinated with the Coast Guard. On two occasions, the blips disappeared — probably because the subs heard our radio chatter and dove deep. We never sank a submarine. But I like to think we deterred them, jus...