Marine Private Russell McCurdy was shaving when it all began. He had just completed his overnight watch aboard the battleship USS Arizona, which was moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was 5 minutes to 8 on the morning of December 7th, 1941. Private McCurdy was looking forward to a day of shore liberty and listening to a football radio broadcast with a family in nearby Honolulu. Then he felt a few thumps as he stood at his wash basin and heard someone scream that the ship was under attack. As he scrambled to reach his battle station 100 feet above the water, he quite literally watched history explode before his eyes.

Today, the USS Arizona still lies where it sank, near Ford Island in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. It is a national monument, honoring every sailor and Marine who lost their life in Japan’s sneak attack that propelled the U.S. into World War II. For decades, Russell McCurdy, who miraculously survived the catastrophic bombing of his vessel, was a living reminder of both what was lost that day and what was eventually achieved in the fight against tyranny.

McCurdy was one of 88 Marines assigned to the Arizona’s crew of 1,482 men. He was an orderly for Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, commander of Battleship Division 1 at Pearl Harbor. At 24 years of age, McCurdy was older than most of his fellow Marines. He’d grown up in Manistee County, Michigan, and had worked for Ford Motor Company and Bethlehem Steel during the uncertain days of the Great Depression. But he became draft eligible and did not want to join the Army, so he enlisted in the Marines, in Detroit, in March of 1941. After boot camp he found himself in Long Beach, California, where he caught the Arizona before it headed for Hawaii.

The Arizona was berthed in “Battleship Row” along with seven other of what McCurdy called “battle wagons” and a smaller repair ship situated between the Arizona and the south shore of Ford Island. As scores of Japanese bombers targeted the stationary vessels, McCurdy climbed a rope ladder from the Arizona’s main deck to his assignment as a gun director in a well-protected control station perched atop the ship’s triangular mainmast. He was at his post when a bomb pierced the Arizona’s deck and burrowed deep into the heart of the ship, where its ammunition and fuel were stored.

When that bomb exploded, the blast lifted the Arizona’s bow 35 feet into the air. McCurdy said he watched the massive ship “open like of blooming flower” as a fireball and debris leaped into the air. The concussion knocked every Marine in the control station to the floor, but they were able to escape on the rope ladder — covered with now-sizzling-hot varnish. Many years later, McCurdy received a Purple Heart for the burns he received on his hands in that desperate descent.

Back on the main deck, McCurdy encountered countless wounded sailors, many burned beyond recognition. An officer ordered him jump overboard and swim for Ford Island. McCurdy complied and reached safety about the time the attack ended. The next night, he found himself manning a machine gun on Ford Island, awaiting a follow-up attack that never came. He was among just 15 Marines who survived the attack, which claimed 1,177 lives. Many men who died that day remain entombed in the Arizona’s wreckage.

Russell McCurdy moved on from Pearl Harbor to fight in island-hopping campaigns in the Western Pacific, including victory at the coral island of Peleliu, in a battle historians have termed “the bitterest of the war for the Marines.” When his brother, Arthur, was killed in the European Theater of war, Russell became a sole male survivor in his family and was spared further combat assignments.

In peacetime, McCurdy became an officer, rising to the rank of Major. He retired from the Marines in 1965 as a Lieutenant Colonel, and moved to his wife, Pearl, to her native Mount Etna in Huntington County. Much of his free time in the following years was spent recounting the events of December 7, 1941, for civic and historical groups across the nation. He regarded those appearances as fulfilling a duty owed many fallen comrades whom, he said, “never had the chance” to share their stories with an audience.