MOUNT CARMEL - Joseph Shamansky remembers driving to the barracks at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and then looking up.
"All of a sudden the sky was full of Jap planes," Shamansky recalled. "They were everywhere. And then all hell broke loose. There was fire everywhere."
Shamansky, 92, currently living with his daughter, Sharon Stankiewicz, and her family in Mount Carmel, is a survivor of the Japanese attack and bombing of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. The attack, known as "a day which will live in infamy" by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, took the lives of 2,403 military personnel and civilians and injured 1,178 more.
For many years, he shielded his family from the events of that day, according to his daughter.
"We would often talked to him about those days, but he always protected us from that, never telling us about what they saw or what it was like," Stankiewicz said.
School project
A few years ago, Shamansky, who now suffers from dementia, granted an interview to a family friend's child for a school project, talking a little bit about his time in the service and the attack.
A veteran of the Army Air Corps, Shamansky joined in 1939 when jobs became scarce in Mount Carmel, like many others did.
"There were lots of coal region people in Hawaii, because coal wasn't what it used to be, " he said. "You couldn't buy a job in Mount Carmel, so a lot of guys joined the service."
Shamansky was tasked with keeping all of the air bases up to code. Because he had attained the rank of master sergeant, he was given the freedom to live off-base in a home he shared with friends.
"There must have been 20 or 30 guys from Mount Carmel alone," he said. "They would all come to our house and we had keys made for them. We were always together when we could be. Some women, too; my sister was there, she was a major in the Army Nurse Corps."
Shamansky and his housemates even had a vehicle, bought from a Naval captain on an installment plan, to travel back and forth to the barracks. The night before the attack, Shamansky and several housemates used the vehicle to take a friend, Seggie, back to the base so he wouldn't be late for guard duty. Seggie made it in time for his shift, but he didn't make it through the next day.
"He started his shift at midnight on the Arizona," he said.
Seggie was the nickname of Naval Corpsman Albert Berkanski, of Mount Carmel, who was one of the 1,177 men killed on the Arizona after it sank.
"We never saw him again," Shamansky said.
On Dec. 7, Shamansky and a few of his housemates were driving to the barracks when the attacks started.
"We were diverted to Hickam Field and when we got there, the whole place was on fire. Japs were dropping bombs and shooting everything they could," he said.
He said it was just about survival at that point.
"There was no organization, it was total chaos," he said. "You weren't with your outfit and everybody was scattered all over the place. Guys were just grabbing whatever weapons they could and shooting back at the Japs."
The young interviewer noted in his story that Shamansky became upset by the memory and stopped talking.
'My duty to be there'
Following the attack, Shamansky served all over the Pacific. He also served in Europe for a short time before serving in New Guinea and Okinawa. He said he saw "a lot of action," but gave no more details to his young interviewer.
Shamansky's brothers served in the Marines during the war and the military tradition continues through his grandson, Brandon Stankiewicz, a West Point graduate who served in Iraq for 18 months.
"He was a pretty big influence on me," Brandon Stankiewicz said from his Florida home. "I remember my father and him going out every Dec. 7 to different places to meet with other war veterans to talk about that day, and then I got to go along when I was old enough."
Stankiewicz said that he has a greater respect for his grandfather after hearing the details of his Pearl Harbor experience.
"We've only known it from films and other accounts, but when it comes from someone close to you, it's very awe-inspiring," Brandon said.
Despite surviving the attack and living to tell the tale, Shamansky ended the interview by saying that he is no hero.
"The guys that are dead, those guys are heroes," Shamansky told the interviewer. "I deserved it - I signed up for it. I felt it was my duty to be there. Those other guys, those younger guys who were drafted and killed in the war, I don't feel they deserved that. They didn't know what they were getting into, but I did."