Bowsite.com

Pearl Harbor survivor gone today at 105

"Jim Downing, beloved patriarch of The Navigators, went home to be with the Lord on February 13, 2018. He’d undergone surgery in recent weeks, and was unable to rally. He was known as Navigator #6, one of the first servicemen discipled by The Navigators founder Dawson Trotman."

"MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It had been 75 years since Retired Naval Lt. Jim Downing laid eyes on the mast of the U.S.S. West Virginia — the battleship he called home for 10 years during World War II.

The second-oldest Pearl Harbor survivor visited the ship’s mast during a ceremony at West Virginia University’s Oglebay Plaza on Friday, where he also had the opportunity to ring the ship’s bell.

Lt. Downing, now 104-years-old, was only 27-years-old when the U.S.S. West Virginia sank at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Standing before the mast Friday, Downing said it appeared much different than the last time he saw the structure.

“It had a super structure around it that we called a caged mast,” he said. “I’d never seen it stripped down so much. There were stairways going up. It was a long climb to the top.”

The last that Downing had seen the mast was as the U.S.S. West Virginia was on fire and sinking after the Pearl Harbor attacks.

“On the morning of Dec. 7, this mast didn’t do us a lot of good,” he said. “The purpose of the mast on a ship was an observation tower. We didn’t have radar. All we knew was what we could see with the eye.”"

I recently got to meet a PH survivor at the site of the Arizona, a native Hawaiian, was there to visit with us tourists, really nice guy. Don't know his age but probably 90 plus, we got a pix together.

Register here to reply to this topic