CNN
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When bombs fell on Pearl Harbor during a shocking attack, turning Hawaii’s calm waters into a graveyard of twisted metal, burning debris and the noise of destruction, Earl “Chuck” Kohler didn’t hesitate to fight back.

He was 17 when Japanese bombers fell from the sky, killing 2,403 Americans and catapulting the United States into World War II. It was a brutal, merciless attack that left the U.S. Pacific Fleet in ruins and seared the memory of that day into history as, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, “a date that will remain in infamy.”

Kohler had not followed direct orders to take shelter in a ditch and remain where he was. Instead, he ran to get ammunition. Armed and determined, he and his comrades fought fiercely to repel the second wave of Japanese bombers attacking Ford Island.

“Maybe I was a stupid farm boy, but I know that this is the beginning of the war they’ve been talking about and waiting for, and I know that if I lose my life here, I won’t. “I don’t want to lose it in this ditch,” Kohler, a Minnesota farm boy turned sailor, said in an interview recorded by the Library in the Congress. “I want my family and my country to know that I died fighting, not hiding.”

Before joining the Navy, Kohler was the son of a sharecropper and the fourth of ten children. There was so much to do that there was no time for hobbies other than hunting and helping put food on the table, he said in an interview with CNN. But when he turned 17, he volunteered for the Navy because he felt it was right for him to be there.

“I had learned early in life that you never run away from a challenge or a struggle, you always run towards it. You can’t beat them by running from them,” Kohler told CNN.

“If I am to be seen as a representative of the people of my generation, as I tried to be for everyone who died at Pearl Harbor, I hope that I did it in a way that made them proud and helped them well-deserved honor and the lasting remembrance they rightly deserve.”

The now 100-year-old veteran is believed to be one of only 16 Pearl Harbor survivors still alive, Kathleen Farley, president of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors in the US state of California, confirmed to CNN. Of those killed, 1,177 served on the USS Arizona. Lou Conter, the last known survivor of the attack on the ship, died in April.

On Saturday, thousands will gather on the shores of Pearl Harbor to mark the 83rd anniversary of the bombing. They will honor members of the Greatest Generation, a tribute to the Americans who lived through the Great Depression and then fought in World War II “for their sacrifice, courage and indomitable perseverance.”

“The motto of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors is ‘Least We Forget.’ “We have not forgotten the 87,000 active military personnel who were on the island of Oahu on December 7, 1941,” said Farley, daughter of John Farley , who survived the attack aboard the USS California.

“Several events are planned to honor our beloved Pearl Harbor survivors, our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were there, and we know their stories,” Farley said. “May fair winds and seas follow those who have gone before us. We, the sons and daughters, will continue your story with pride.”

Survivors attend anniversary events in Hawaii and California

According to Pacific Historic Parks, which operates the USS Arizona Memorial, at least two survivors – Ken Stevens and Ira “Ike” Schab Jr. – are expected to attend the Pearl Harbor memorial ceremony in Oahu.

According to a post published by Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Schab, 104, was greeted by the U.S. Pacific Fleet Band and the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Honor Guard upon his arrival at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport on Tuesday. His family had raised more than $5,000 to enable him to travel to the Pearl Harbor commemorations.

At first, Schab didn’t want to return to the island because the memory was so painful, his family told CNN affiliate Hawaii News Now. But years ago, when Schab saw that the number of remaining survivors was slowly decreasing, he changed his mind.

“He said, ‘As long as I can make the trip, I want to make the trip for the people who can’t make the trip,'” his son Karl Schab told Hawaii News Now.

On the morning of the attacks, Schab was a musician in the naval band aboard the USS Dobbin and had just showered and sat down for coffee, his daughter said on her GoFundMe page. He was waiting for his younger brother, Allen, to visit so they could explore Honolulu together.

But that morning they never met – and when the attacks began, Schab immediately began supplying the gunners with ammunition. More than anything else about that day, Schab remembers “being scared,” he told Hawaii News Now. “I wonder about my brothers. Where they were.”

The attack occurred around 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning and was carried out by 353 Japanese aircraft, 35 submarines and two battleships. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed.

The air was full of smoke and the acrid smell of burning oil and metal. Once proud and sturdy ships were torn apart by torpedoes and bombs, sending huge clouds of fire and debris into the air. The U.S. battleships anchored in the harbor were hit with such force that their hulls gave way and split open and flames engulfed the decks in a blinding inferno.

Bodies of sailors, soldiers and airmen were thrown into the water, some burned beyond recognition, others floating in the oily sea. The air was filled with the screams of agonized men, the crackle of machine gun fire, and the thunderous explosions that shook the ground.

Nearby, Kohler was in an aircraft hangar right in the center of Pearl Harbor, writing a letter to his mother on a typewriter, when he heard a plane getting closer and closer.

“Suddenly and almost simultaneously there was this huge roar and bomb fragments and window glass hit me in the back of the head, in my ears, in my neck and in my shoulders,” Kohler said during the interview published by the Library of Congress.

Despite being threatened with a report for disobeying his officer’s direct order to stay in the ditch, Kohler continued to run. He grabbed a 50-caliber machine gun and ammunition and helped fire at attacking fighter planes.

“What struck me most was the explosion and capsizing of these ships and the knowledge that many people died in each of these events,” Kohler said.

Kohler is not in Hawaii. Instead, he will speak at the annual Beacon ceremony hosted by the conservation organization Save Mount Diablo in California to pay tribute to the lives lost and honor surviving veterans. The Mount Diablo beacon was installed and lit in 1928 to support transcontinental aviation. But during the West Coast blackout following the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was extinguished out of fear that it might lead to an attack on California.

It remained dark until Pearl Harbor Day in 1964, when Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Forces in World War II, relit the beacon in a memorial ceremony and proposed that it be lit every December 7 to honor those who served and made sacrifices.

“In my opinion, it gives the few survivors that remain an opportunity to look back across the miles and years and reconnect with our sunken shipmates and fallen comrades,” Kohler told CNN.

Kohler says he believes if those lost there that day had a voice of their own, they would say, “Remember us.”