A 100-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor recalls the confusion and chaos when the Japanese bomb exploded 83 years ago.

Bob Fernandez thought he would dance and see the world when he joined the US Navy as a 17-year-old high school student in August 1941.

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Four months later he found himself reeling from explosions and handing ammunition to gunners so his ship's guns could return fire on Japanese planes bombing Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian military base.

“When those things go like that, we didn't know what it was,” said Fernandez, who is now 100 years old.

Two survivors of the bombing – each 100 years old or older – plan to return to Pearl Harbor on Saturday to mark the 83rd anniversary of the attack on America in World War II. They will join active duty military, veterans and members of the public in a memorial service hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service.

Fernandez originally planned to join them but had to withdraw due to health issues.

The bombing killed more than 2,300 US servicemen. About half, or 1,177, were sailors and Marines aboard the USS Arizona, which sank during the war. The remains of more than 900 Arizona crew members are still aboard the sunken ship.

A moment of silence will be held at 7:54 am, the same time the attack began eighty years ago. Airplanes in the formation of missing persons must fly high to break the silence.

Dozens of survivors once joined the annual commemoration but attendance has dwindled as survivors have aged. Today only 16 are still alive, according to a list kept by Kathleen Farley, the California district chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Military historian J. Michael Wenger estimated that there were about 87,000 soldiers on Oahu on the day of the attack.

Many hail the survivors of Pearl Harbor as heroes, but Fernandez doesn't see himself that way.

“I'm not a hero. I'm nothing but a bulletproof person,” he told the Associated Press in a phone interview from California, where he now lives with his nephew in Lodi.

Fernandez was working as a mess cook on his ship, the USS Curtiss, on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and had planned to go dancing that night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.

He brought coffee and food to the sailors as he waited tables at breakfast. Then they heard the alarm go off. Through the hatch, Fernandez saw a plane with the red ball insignia painted on a Japanese aircraft passing by.

Fernandez rushed down three floors to the magazine room where he and other sailors were waiting for someone to open a door that held 5-inch (12.7 cm), 38 shells to begin transferring them to the ship's guns.

He told interviewees years ago that some sailors he worked with were praying and crying as they heard gunshots overhead.

“I felt scared because I didn't know what was going on,” said Fernandez.

The ship's guns hit a Japanese plane that hit one of its cranes. Soon after, its guns hit a floating bomb that hit the ship and exploded below deck, burning the hangar and main deck, according to the Navy History and Heritage Command.

Fernandez's ship, the Curtiss, lost 21 men and nearly 60 of its sailors were wounded.

“We lost a lot of good people, you know. They didn't do anything,” said Fernandez. “But we don't know what will happen in the war.”

After the attack, Fernandez had to sweep up the trash. That night, he patrolled with a gun to make sure no one tried to board. When it was time to rest, he slept next to where the dead of the ship lay. He realized that when another sailor woke him up and told him.

After the war, Fernandez worked as a forklift driver at a cannery in San Leandro, California. His wife of 65 years, Mary Fernandez, died in 2014. His oldest son is now 82 and lives in Arizona. Two other sons and a stepdaughter are deceased.

He has been to Hawaii three times to participate in the Pearl Harbor memorial. This year would be his fourth trip.

Fernandez still enjoys music and dances at a nearby restaurant once a week when she can. Frank Sinatra's favorite song is “All of Me,” a song his nephew Joe Guthrie said he knows by heart.

“Women flocked to him like moths to a flame,” Guthrie said.

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