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Minnesota Veteran's Ashes Interred On USS Arizona

By Jim Mendoza, CBS News

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- John Anderson, a retired Navy sailor from Dilworth, was a storyteller.

"There was lots of stories that Dad told us, but he'd always kind of give us bits and pieces of the story," said John Anderson Jr., Anderson's son.

He was the oldest-living crewman to survive Japan's bombing of the USS Arizona.

John Anderson
John Anderson (credit: CBS)

"He said he felt like he let Jake down and that he let the family down because he couldn't get him," said Karolyn Anderson, Anderson's widow.

Jake was John's twin brother. They were in separate sections of the ship on Dec. 7, 1941. After the first explosions, John frantically searched for Jake.

"That's when the big explosion happened, and Dad was blown back off of the deck," John Jr. said.

He was ordered to flee the burning vessel, but when he got to Ford Island, he and another sailor headed back for the Arizona.

"And they were able to pick up four people on the way back to the Arizona when they got hit by an explosion," John Jr. said. "Dad survived that, and Rose and the rest of the guys they picked up were gone."

John learned decades later that Jake died aboard the ship while manning an anti-aircraft gun. He returned frequently to Pearl Harbor; the first time in 1969, and again this year.

"I'm trying not to go ahead of myself, but I have a lot of emotions leaving him here, but I know that that's where he would want to be," Karolyn said.

Before he died last November, John told his sons to place his remains in the sunken battleship.

"He wanted to come back and be interred with Jake there on the Arizona, and the other men that he was with," Karolyn said.

It will be the final chapter in John Anderson's life story.

"[It would be] a good time for us to say goodbye to him, and he would like that," John Jr. said. "He loved family."

Navy divers buried the ashes of John and a second sailor on Wednesday. About 1,100 sailors and Marines are entombed in the sunken memorial.

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