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Pearl Harbor Survivor Recalls Attack 70 Years Later

BOSTON (CBS) - Wednesday marks 70 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor that pushed the United States into World War II.

The number of survivors gets smaller everyday, but one Sudbury man still remembers every moment.

At 90-years-old Gerry Halterman has a lot of stories. But there is one you wont hear many places anymore.

WBZ-TV's Kate Merrill reports

"I had a midnight watch December 6 1941," he recalls.

It was exactly 70 years ago, the memory more vivid than even last week.

The young Naval officer had lucked out, was on shore duty and inside an office and not below deck the USS Oklahoma.

"I heard this terrible noise and I go over to the front of the building, look out and I hear the torpedo planes coming in," says Halterman. "They're coming in so low they are using our building as a flight path."

Gerry watched the planes drop bombs on Pearl Harbor and watched his friends and colleagues perish.

Its a memory still fresh and as he sits now inside the Orchard Hills assisted living center in Sudbury he still calls it a miracle.

"I should be real grateful for not having to go through that and being a witness to it," he says.

There are so few Pearl Harbor survivors left that the national survivors groups is disbanding after this year.

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