There are times, some marked by panicky midnight dreams or haphazard flashbacks, when Don Blair would rather forget Pearl Harbor.
"It's not as vivid now as it was," said the private and contemplative ex-sailor and retired postal employee. "But I think of Pearl Harbor probably every day, one way or another."
At 89, Blair is president of the regional chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association whose membership has dwindled to a handful of old salts.
The Rohnert Park resident is proud to have served with the Navy and to have been at Pearl Harbor, even though the terror of what he saw and experienced aboard the beleaguered battleship Nevada 68 years ago today still haunts him.
At 7:55 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, 23 members of a Navy band launched into the National Anthem for the morning's raising of the flag aboard the 29,000-ton battleship USS Nevada.
The Nevada -- America's 36th battleship, named for the 36th state -- was moored just off Pearl Harbor's Ford Island near the clustered battleships Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Maryland and California.
Suddenly, waves of Japanese torpedo bombers and dive-bombers attacked. All members of the Nevada's band stood their ground until finishing "The Star-Spangled Banner," then sprinted to their battle stations.
Blair, who served as a yeoman, has plenty to say about Pearl Harbor, but he is reluctant to say anything for fear it may sound like he's complaining. As grateful as he is that some people still honor WWII vets and show an interest in their war, he recoils at the thought of anyone equating him with his fellow warriors who demonstrated great valor under fire.
"I'm not unique," Blair said. "And I'm no hero."
At 8:10 a.m., a torpedo struck the port side of the Nevada and exploded. Water streamed in through the damaged hull.
The dreadnought's acting commanders -- Capt. F.W. Scanland had begun the day in Honolulu and was racing back to Pearl Harbor -- decided to make a run for the open sea.
As the ship groaned past the mortally damaged USS Arizona, an explosion on the Arizona blew a shower of metal debris onto the Nevada, killing several of its sailors.
Blair was born in North Dakota and grew up a hardworking and poor Depression-era farmboy. He enlisted at 19 in 1939 after a man-to-man with his girlfriend's uncle, a Navy recruiter.
"My gal friend and he talked me into it," he said. For Blair, putting on a military uniform was a pinch-me moment.
"I couldn't believe it," he said. "Me? Joining the Navy?"
It was mind-bending for him, too, to step aboard the 583-foot-long USS Nevada in San Pedro in September 1939.
"It was overwhelming," he remembered.
A petty officer, Blair was assigned to a steady stream of clerical duties related to the upkeep and repair of the battleship. He vividly remembers gazing out a porthole in his office as the ship lay moored on Battleship Row in sunny Pearl Harbor the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.
"I saw this plane flying in low -- and it had a meatball on it," he said. Then bombs fell.
As the only battleship to get under way that morning, the Nevada came under intense dive-bomber attack when it entered the harbor's main channel and made for the ocean.