When he enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Dec. 11, 1939, Jim DeWitt had no idea he was signing up for what would be a front seat to history — to be an eyewitness to the most horrific attack to ever take place on American soil at that time.

The now 95-year-old Culver, Indiana man said he’ll never forget what he witnessed aboard the USS Antares, just two years after he joined up to serve his country.

There are moments in history that leave indelible images burned into our memories — those recalled with the opening statement “I remember where I was when…” John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Man’s first footstep on the Moon. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

For DeWitt, it was the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — a day that, 75 years later, is still remarkably vivid.

The unlikely path that led to DeWitt witnessing the horrific events of that day is almost as riveting.

FORGING HIS OWN PATH

Orphaned at 4 years old, DeWitt spent eight years in an orphanage in Mexico, Indiana. Then he was sent to work on a farm 100 miles away. Angry after being separated from his siblings and forced to work at a farm he didn’t like, DeWitt ran away.

First, he ended up in Chicago, where his aunt owned a beauty shop. However, unable to locate his aunt and finding himself in trouble with the law for running away from the farm, DeWitt headed for Missouri and the Ozark Mountains — a place he’d only seen once in pictures. From there he went to Dallas, and he even had thoughts of heading for the West Coast. But the young man, who only had a ninth grade education at the time, decided enough was enough.

“I thought I’d go back to another aunt and uncle in Illinois, so I hitchhiked back there,” DeWitt said. “They said they’d keep me but wanted to notify the orphanage, so they called. Turns out, I couldn’t stay because I was a ward of the state of Indiana.”

So DeWitt came back to Indiana — with a chip on his shoulder.

A couple years later, he found himself working for yet another farm owner, but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of his life.

“It was the first time I had ever felt like a human being,” he said. “It changed my life completely.”

He finished high school in Indiana. His guardian at the time was the welfare officer of Noble County, and she offered him an opportunity to get a four-year scholarship at Manchester College. But DeWitt said he was fed up with living under the state’s thumb.

He instead enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

ROUTE TO PEARL HARBOR

Having taken a typing class in high school, DeWitt was educated in the art of shorthand. It just so happened that the commander of the Navy’s Service Squadron Eight needed someone with that skill.

“There were five of us, and I was selected,” he said. “So I was sent to the USS Antares for temporary duty. I ended up as Yeoman 2nd Class by June 1941, which was pretty fast in those years.”

The USS Antares was a cargo ship, and DeWitt said it reminded him of a big mobile department store. Instead of having skids of supplies, there were individual storage units full of everything from uniforms to sporting equipment. The Antares would often anchor away from port and have tugboats come out to bring supplies inland.

Since the Antares was just a supply ship, it wasn’t armed.

In late 1941, the Antares was asked to take a corps of Army engineers and supplies to Kanton Island, about 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. From there, the ship was called to go to Palmyra Island in the South Pacific, pick up a tow and to take it to Pearl Harbor.

“It was getting rough at the time,” DeWitt said. “The Japanese were talking peace in Washington D.C., but they sent the USS Selfridge down to Kanton Island to follow us [to Palmyra Island and onto Pearl Harbor].”

The Selfridge was one of the Navy’s top-line destroyers, and it was equipped with sonar. After the Antares left Kanton Island, the Selfridge picked up what appeared to be a submarine following the Antares.

“So they had us stop all motors,” DeWitt said, “and the sub would stop. Then the Selfridge would come around us at full speed and try to find out where they were, with little success.”

The submarine followed the Antares all the way to Pearl Harbor. Because the Selfridge was low on fuel, it went into the harbor and left the Antares alone.

“We didn’t know what was happening. Some of the guys in the radio shack on the ship said they saw a blue light in the middle of the night where the sub would come up to recharge,” DeWitt said.

THE SUB IS SPOTTED

Since the U.S. wasn’t yet at war, DeWitt was confused about why a submarine was keeping watch on them.

As it turned out, more than 30 submarines were watching American ships that fateful day.

“The submarines were ahead of the aerial attack,” DeWitt said.

So there DeWitt sat, with Pearl Harbor in the distance and a Japanese submarine on the Antares’ starboard side.

A little after 6 a.m., one of the members of the Antares’ watch spotted the Japanese sub. They quickly reported the incident to the Navy yard and the base commander at Pearl Harbor. The destroyer USS Ward came to the rescue, sinking the sub.

But even after that incident, DeWitt said no one called “General Quarters,” when all the crew members are to report immediately to their battle stations. Instead, DeWitt said, music from a local Honolulu station played loudly over the speakers.

“If they had called ‘General Quarters’ when we alerted them,” he said, “they would have had almost two hours to get many of the planes and some of the ships out of the harbor.”

‘THIS IS AN AIR RAID’

Since that call never came, DeWitt said he thought the Japanese aerial attack he then witnessed was, at first, just a simulation.

“They would often have simulated dive bombing attacks,” he said, “and they’d drop flour sacks on the USS Utah. So we just watched it and didn’t even know it was real until afterward.”

And when DeWitt and the rest of the Antares crew finally figured out what was really happening, all they could do was watch.

“You could see the Japanese planes and the smoke coming from the harbor,” he said. “The planes were diving, and the radio station was still playing music. But then it stopped all of a sudden, and it said, ‘this is an air raid, take cover!'”

Since the Antares was outside the harbor, DeWitt said he and eight other men went up to the bow of the ship to “watch the dogfight.” By that time, the U.S. had its own planes in the air.

“While we were watching, we heard this plane coming really low,” DeWitt said. “It was a Japanese Zero [Mitsubishi A6M fighter plane]. By the time we heard him, he was on us. He opened fire, and we hit the deck. He wasn’t shooting at us but rather the bridge of the ship.”

DeWitt and the rest of the crew were ordered to go below deck — and that’s the first time DeWitt said he felt uneasy. He knew bombs and torpedos were raining down above him, but he couldn’t see any of it. DeWitt said he had no idea how bad the devastation was at Pearl Harbor, or whether the Japanese had brought land forces. After the attack ceased, the Antares was sent to Honolulu.

DAYS AND YEARS AFTER

The next day, DeWitt received a telegram from the Red Cross that his brother, who also served in the military, was in a Pearl Harbor hospital.

“I got there, and my brother was in outpatient with jaundice,” DeWitt said. “But the hospital was the worst part of all of it for me. In there, most of the injuries were burns. There was an awful sound. It was an awful smell, between the oil burning in the harbor and the smell of burning flesh. It was just too much.”

The memories of Pearl Harbor are still raw and fresh in DeWitt’s mind, and at that point in his recounting of events he paused to regain his composure.

DeWitt stayed in the Navy for a couple more years, but he said none of it compared to that December day in 1941.

On the 70th anniversary in 2011, DeWitt and a small group of his comrades went back to Pearl Harbor as guests of the Honor Flight Network, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to transport veterans to visit memorials honoring their service and sacrifices. It was the first time DeWitt had been back to Pearl Harbor since the attacks.

And last Saturday, DeWitt, one of the few survivors who are still living, went back once again. This time he took along his son, John.

“I wonder why I go back,” he said, “but I think I go because they can’t. Why do I get recognition? You think about those guys at Pearl Harbor or Normandy or at the Battle of the Bulge. They’re the ones that deserve it. But I guess I’m the one who gets to represent them.”

Dunlap writes for the Logansport, Indiana, Pharos Tribune. 

In accordance with a presidential proclamation issued Tuesday evening, Vice President-elect Governor Mike Pence is directing flags at state facilities statewide be lowered to half-staff at sunrise on Wednesday, Dec. 7, in honor of the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Flags should return to full-staff at sunset.

Vice President-elect Governor Pence also asks businesses and residents to lower their flags to half-staff in honor of Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.