I have posted this before.
It strikes me how blessed my family has been. I have been fortunate enough to have had a family that is close, my father and his brothers and sisters had family reunions every few years when they all were young enough to travel like that.
All the aunts and uncles told the kids stories about their parents, and each other when we got together for a family reunion. Jerry, Jack's wife, was like a dark haired Betty Hutton, she would sing a song or two for us sometimes. She was in the USO in Paris when he met her. My most cherished memories are those family reunions. Jack was at Pearl Harbor, he wrote memoir of his life, from his childhood, to escaping Nebraska to the sea, lifetime of service to his country, he was a lot of places when events of consequence happened. Job was communications, so he heard about it first, before the Captain, when the ship got a message. Has photos, diagrams of Pearl from the day, were all the ships were. It is really something, I ought to get a copy or get it scanned.
He was aboard the Pelias, on KP. He threw potatoes at them, because that is what he had. He was peeling them on deck because even if it is December, in Hawaii you want to be on deck for that sort of work, if they'll let you. No gun, so used what he had. What is a potato going to do to an airplane? I don't know, but it could not do you any good to hit one going 200 mph. They were not shooting at him so much as the battleships, he just happened to be in the flight path, went by close enough you could see if the pilot was clean shaven. He knew just what was happening, you don't wonder what that big meatball on those planes means. He was furious, maddest he ever was in his life.
Look at the diagram and you will get the idea of the layout. They were right there and had their small boat, so off they go. The Oklahoma was the first one as they got out in the channel. I am fairly certain I saw a photo of him online a few years ago, bare headed in his undershirt and a pair of dungarees, facing away from the camera, toward the burning ship.
He said you get the person under the arms to pull them out of the water, because if they are burned and you try to grab them, their skin comes off. That was the last thing he said about that day, maybe the last time he ever talked about it. He stopped, collected himself then finished. He hoped we would never have to see, and smell something like that. He told us it gave him nightmares, 40 years later.