NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Flag-waving fans lined the sidewalk in front of the National World War II Museum. in New Orleans on Wednesday to greet the oldest living survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as he marked his upcoming 105th birthday.
“It feels great,” Joseph Eskenazi of Redondo Beach, California, told reporters after posing for pictures with his great-grandson, who is about to turn 5, his 21-month-old great-granddaughter and six other World War II veterans. . all in their 90s.
Eskenazi turns 105 on January 30. She boarded an Amtrak train in California on Friday to travel to New Orleans. The other veterans, representing the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, flew in to attend the event.
They were visiting thanks to the Soaring Valor program, a project of actor Gary Sinise’s charitable foundation dedicated to helping veterans and first responders. The program organizes trips to the museum for World War II veterans and their guardians.
Eskenazi was a private first class in the Army when the attack occurred. Memories of him include waking up when a bomb fell, but did not explode, near where he slept at Schofield Barracks, reverberating explosions when the battleship USS Arizona was sunk by Japanese bombs, and machine gun fire from enemy aircraft kicking up dust around him. after he volunteered to drive a bulldozer across a field so it could be used to clear tracks.
“I don’t even know why, I just raised my hand when they asked for volunteers,” Eskenazi said. “No one else raised their hand because they knew it meant death. … I did it unconsciously.”
He was at Schofield Army Barracks when the attack began on December 7, 1941, which brought the United States into the war. Some 2,400 soldiers died.
Eskenazi and his fellow veterans lined up to take pictures amid displays of World War II aircraft and Higgins ships, designed for beach landings.
“Thank you guys for giving us a country worth fighting for,” veteran Billy Hall, who rose to the rank of major in the Marine Corps after enlisting in 1941, shouted to supporters.
The museum opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum and has since expanded in size and scope.
