Local (Omaha area) eyewitness to historic Pearl Harbor attack dies at age 100

[Omaha Steve]

https://omaha.com/news/local/local-eyewitness-to-historic-pearl-harbor-attack-dies-at-age-100/article_8859e726-9343-11ec-8fef-47c8beda6d2f.html#tracking-source=home-the-latest

Steve Liewer Feb 23, 2022 Updated 4 hrs ago

Early on that long-ago December morning in Honolulu, George Flecky Jr. woke up to the sound of explosions coming from the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, 8 miles away.

The 20-year-old from Council Bluffs at first thought some of the big warships from the base — where he had been working as a civilian carpenter for seven months — were taking target practice.

Flecky was wrong.

Pearl Harbor was under attack by Japanese navy bombers. Much of Battleship Row, where ships like the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia lay at anchor, was in flames.



George Flecky Jr., in dark pants at lower right, looks over the wrecked destroyers USS Downes and USS Cassin, left foreground, and the battleship USS Pennsylvania, right background, at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard soon after the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The smoke is from the sunken and burning USS Arizona, out of view behind the Pennsylvania. Flecky, a 20-year-old civilian carpenter working at Pearl Harbor, was brought in to fight fires. Flecky, who died in Omaha on Feb. 16 at age 100, is believed to have been the last living local eyewitness to the Japanese attack.

Steve Liewer

FULL story at link above.