A ceremony in Mission, Kansas brought dozens of people together on Wednesday for the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
Names were read to remember local Pearl Harbor survivors, both past and present.
Of those names, 94-year-old survivor Dorwin Lamkin was mentioned.
Lamkin, sitting in front of the large crowd, received a standing ovation for his service.
“You know I was 18 years old, I was scared to death,” Lamkin recalled as he shared his story of Pearl Harbor, remembering vivid details of that Sunday morning 75 years ago.
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“At that time, the general quarters alarm, ‘bong bong, bong bong,’ and everybody was galvanized,” he said. “We all went to our battle stations.”
He was a Navy corpsman for the USS Nevada.
“In an hour and a half or two hours, my ship ended up sunk on the channel on the way out to sea, without underway,” Lamkin said. “I've never been in any circumstances like this before in my life, and all I could think of was to do what I was told. And I wasn't told to do anything. We were all scrambling around taking care of ourselves as best as we could.”
Lamkin said he got off the ship with a load of injured sailors and then headed to a Navy hospital.
“I stayed at the Navy hospital for a short time,” he said.
Dozens of people waited in line, thanking Lamkin for his service.
Tom Davidson showed Lamkin a picture of his father-in-law, a Pearl Harbor survivor who passed away five years ago.
“I just have the utmost respect for those guys and what they went through,” Davidson said.
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Rae Daniel can be reached at Rae.Daniel@KSHB.com.
