With the ranks of Kentucky Pearl Harbor survivors shrinking to just a handful, ceremonies marking the anniversary are taking on new meaning.
"Vaughn, you're what, 96, 97?" Kentucky Pearl Harbor Commemorative Association Chairman Don Dixon asks as he introduces one of the guests of honor at a gathering marking the 75th anniversary of the attack.
"98!" the veteran calls out to laughter and applause.
Seated at a table with a handwritten sign reading “Reserved PH Survivors” in the center, Vaughn Drake is one of just two in attendance who can claim that increasingly rare title. A little hard of hearing, the one time member of the Army Engineer unit in Oahu leans in close for questions but has no trouble recalling the day that changed the course of American history.
"We first them flying over before we got out of bed. We thought they were Army Air Force just putting on some maneuvers like they always did," he recalls. That was until they noticed "red spots" on the planes. "We thought, well, could that be the Japanese? We still didn't believe it. And then about that time, we same some explosions over on a naval air base where we were."
But Drake says the gravity of the moment took about 24 hours to truly set in.
"We didn't realize what an event it was going to be until the next day. We got to thinking about it and we realized that they started a war that might last a long time," he remembers. "It kind of hit us that this wasn't just a one day affair."
Don Dixon, who heads up the Kentucky Pearl Harbor Commemorative Association, says his group’s mission to make certain the stories and sacrifices of Drake and others aren’t lost to time, and that means passing the torch from the state’s few remaining eyewitnesses to infamy down to their relatives.
"We've got six in the state of Kentucky that we know of," Dixon says. "They had a Pearl Harbor Survivor's Association. The members of that association dwindled so rapidly that they turned it over to the sons and daughters."
Asked what he wants those future generations to know about Pearl Harbor, Drake advises against complacency, quoting his group’s motto “Be vigilant.”
