What happened to the surviving crewmembers immediately after the explosion? How did they feel about surviving when so many were lost?
Most of the sailors and Marines who survived the sinking were already on duty when the bomb hit at 8:06 a.m. Men assigned to areas in the aft (rear) of the ship were immediately hurled from the upper decks of the battleship into the burning, oil-coated waters of the harbor. Some staggered through blankets of thick smoke and fire to the main deck and then jumped overboard. Also, just over 40 men assigned to the ship were not aboard the ship when it was attacked. In total, 319 sailors and 15 Marines (on or off the ship) were officially USS Arizona survivors. An anxiety haunted many of these survivors for years. “Why did I survive when so many others did not?,” is a question that plagued many. Family members of these men say that the biggest problem most of these men endured the rest of their lives was the tremendous guilt for surviving the destruction of their ship.
