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Donald Pepin was poised at the tip of the arrow of America's thrust into World War II. From his U.S. Navy ship, he witnessed the first evidence that Japan was bearing down with malice on Pearl Harbor.
And after the USS Ward fired the United States' first shots in the war at an enemy midget submarine, Japan's bombers soon filled the skies in what became a day of infamy.
Pepin, one of several buddies from St. Paul's East Side who joined the military with no great forethought, only to be thrust into the front lines in one of the most defining days in U.S. history, died Aug. 21, 71 years after surviving the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was 91.
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, was like many others in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. Pepin and many of his fellow Naval Reservists on the Ward -- dozens of them from St. Paul -- felt they were in paradise, yet serving their country and collecting a paycheck to boot.
Pepin was on lookout that morning, when a Japanese midget submarine crept toward the harbor. The Ward's crew wasted no time. The second torpedo it fired punctured the tiny vessel. Barely an hour later the historic air assault filled the harbor sky with smoke and the wails of dying Americans.
"You can't imagine how quick you could wake up when they start dropping bombs on you," Pepin said in an interview in December with WCCO-TV on the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Obituary: Donald Pepin witnessed first U.S. shots of WWII | StarTribune.com
Donald Pepin was poised at the tip of the arrow of America's thrust into World War II. From his U.S. Navy ship, he witnessed the first evidence that Japan was bearing down with malice on Pearl Harbor.
And after the USS Ward fired the United States' first shots in the war at an enemy midget submarine, Japan's bombers soon filled the skies in what became a day of infamy.
Pepin, one of several buddies from St. Paul's East Side who joined the military with no great forethought, only to be thrust into the front lines in one of the most defining days in U.S. history, died Aug. 21, 71 years after surviving the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was 91.
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, was like many others in Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. Pepin and many of his fellow Naval Reservists on the Ward -- dozens of them from St. Paul -- felt they were in paradise, yet serving their country and collecting a paycheck to boot.
Pepin was on lookout that morning, when a Japanese midget submarine crept toward the harbor. The Ward's crew wasted no time. The second torpedo it fired punctured the tiny vessel. Barely an hour later the historic air assault filled the harbor sky with smoke and the wails of dying Americans.
"You can't imagine how quick you could wake up when they start dropping bombs on you," Pepin said in an interview in December with WCCO-TV on the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Obituary: Donald Pepin witnessed first U.S. shots of WWII | StarTribune.com