BAKERSFIELD, CA. - This Sunday marks the 73rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Dec. 7 is the day Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base just outside of Honolulu.
The surprise barrage destroyed 20 American naval vessels, killing more than 2,000 American soldiers and sailors.
But thankfully, some military men and women were able to survive and return home to their families.
17's Ryann Blackshere Vargas was live in studio with the daughter of a survivor who is honoring her father on this upcoming anniversary.
Rebecca Countryman joined us in the studio to remember her father, US Navyman Earl Bishop senior, who was a baker on the USS West Virginia on the day president FDR said would "live on in infamy."
It's also the day her father's life was saved.
"I'm very proud of my dad, very proud of my dad for surviving the US Navy and im very proud that he lived," said Countryman.
He lived to tell his children of the Sunday morning he spent on the top deck of the USS West Virginia, when bombs and bullets started raining down on his ship.
"It was very scary," Countryman said. He was a baker on the ship and when the torpedo hit the ship the chief and him my dad and several of the men went down and closed the water tight doors. well while they were down there they were frustrated so they got irish potatoes and they went back up to the top and threw the irish potatoes at the japanese planes."
An international war had started...and so had her father's quest to find safety.
"When the attack happened there was a lot of gas and oil in the water so that water was hot and burning and on fire. So he literally, I believe, had to jump from the USS West Virginia to the USS Tennessee and since it was docked be able to get there," she said.
He eventually walked ashore 2500 miles away from his wife Ruth, who hadn't been listening to the radio and knew nothing about what had happened.
"She did not know that he was even in the attack until she got a postcard from him a week later saying that he was ok," Countryman said.
After he was cleared to return home to California to his wife and daughter, he eventually had a son and another daughter, rebecca.
Bishop senior passed away in 1998, 57 years after he escaped death during the attack.
"I''m very honored that he lived that long and the man upstairs must have been watching over him for me to have my dad for so many years," she said. "I feel really really blessed to have my dad as many years as I did."
Countryman wants to one day write a book in her father's honor about Pearl Harbor and have family artists like her grandson and niece illustrate the story.
And this Sunday, a Pearl Harbor remembrance ceremony will be held in downtown Bakersfield.
The event is a the Kern Veterans memorial at the coroner of s street and Truxtun Avenue at 9:55 a-m., the time of the attack 73 years ago.
