Photos: 100-year-old survivor participates in Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
Pearl Harbor Survivor Earl “Chuck” Kohler, 100-years-old, was a 17-year-old Seaman 1st Class when he charged across Ford Island base in the center of Pearl Harbor the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, with bombs and machine gun bullets raining down on him as he grabbed a .50 caliber machine gun, hopped into an aircraft and started firing into the sky.
Pearl Harbor Survivor Earl “Chuck” Kohler, 100-years-old, was a 17-year-old Seaman 1st Class when he charged across Ford Island base in the center of Pearl Harbor the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, with bombs and machine gun bullets raining down on him as he grabbed a .50 caliber machine gun, hopped into an aircraft and started firing into the sky. Now he’s a Concord resident and fixture at the annual beacon lighting, which this year marked the 83rd anniversary of the surprise attack that killed 2,403 Americans and thrust the U.S. into the second World War.
From a press release – “the Beacon lighting is a tribute to those individuals that lost their lives at Pearl Harbor,” remarked Earl “Chuck” Kohler, Pearl Harbor Survivor.
The rotating lantern was installed in the late 1920s to assist transcontinental aviation. To ease fears that the beacon would be used as a navigational aid by enemy submarines, the system was deactivated during World War II, and only reignited on Pearl Harbor Day for one night only in 1964 at the suggestion of retired Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
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