Donald Stratton

“What happened on December 7, 1941, if it didn't kill us, changed us forever. President Roosevelt was right to call it "a date that will live in infamy." But for my fellow survivors and me, it also is alive in memory, like shrapnel left embeded in our brains because the surgeon thought it too dangerous to operate.”
― Donald Stratton, All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor

“Men stumbled around on the deck like human torches, each collapsing into a flaming pile of flesh. Others jumped into the water. When they did, you could hear them sizzle. James Cory, one of the Marines on board, recalled what he saw from the quarterdeck: “These people were ‘zombies,’ in essence. They were burned completely white. Their skin was just as white as if you’d taken a bucket of whitewash and painted it white. Their hair was burned off; their eyebrows were burned off. . . . Their arms were held away from their bodies, and they were stumping along the decks.” While that horrific scene was unfolding below us, billows of black smoke pushed into where we were, stinging our eyes, filling our nostrils, our throats, our lungs. We stumbled to our feet, coughing out smoke, unable to catch our breaths because the fire had also burned off our oxygen.”
― Donald Stratton, All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor