Vaughn Paris Drake Jr, America's oldest living veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has passed away. He was 106. He is survived by his wife, Lina Wilson Drake, his son Samuel Drake, two grandsons, and three great-grandchildren.

Vaughn P. Drake Jr. from Kentucky was 23 years old at the time of the Japanese attack on the US Pacific naval base in Hawaii, according to a press release.

He was working as an Army engineer at Kaneohe Naval Air Station on Oahu on the day of the shocking attack on December 7, 1941, which precipitated America’s entry into World War II.

“We were getting ready to go to breakfast, and we heard all these planes flying over and making a lot of noise,” Drake told the Lexington Herald Leader in 2016.

“We just figured it was the Army Air Corps carrying out maneuvers for practice, like they did a lot. We didn’t pay much attention to it.

Other Pearl Harbor survivors (including a great-uncle of mine) had similar tales of that Date Which Will Live in Infamy. The Japanese were hoping to achieve surprise, and they certainly did.

“Finally we left to go to the chow line to get our breakfast, and we noticed these planes flying over the naval air station, diving and everything. And we thought, ‘Boy, they’re really putting on a good show.’ Even though we saw the red spots on the wing — which was the Japanese symbol — we still couldn’t believe it,” he went on.

Mr. Drake also served in the Marianas campaign, at the invasion of Saipan, and, after the Japanese surrender, returned to his home in Lexington, Kentucky.

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Where would our nation be without men like this? When the attack came, they performed. It was a deadly dangerous business. So many of these men saw friends maimed and killed. Even the survivors bore scars, some within, some without. But they recovered from the attack and went on to flood in increasing numbers across the Pacific, and they won. It's hard to imagine what may have happened if they hadn't, but they did. Vaughn P. Drake Jr., from what we read of his life, made no great deal of his service. Many of his peers did likewise. There was a job to do, they did it, and then they went home and got their lives back. They are heroes nonetheless, and now there is one fewer hero in our world.

And now, today, things in the Pacific are tensing up again. Now, the primary geopolitical rival in that part of the world is a nation we supported in World War 2 - China - while Japan has become one of the United States' best allies in the Pacific. History is replete with such ironies.

Mr. Drake will be laid to rest in Winchester Cemetary in Winchester, Kentucky, with full military honors, as he deserves. There are now only 15 confirmed survivors of the December 7th, 1941 attack.

To Vaughn P. Drake Jr.'s family, I can only say this: All of America is proud of Mr. Drake; we, as a nation, are richer for the existence of men such as he. Indeed, without men like him, we might very well not have a nation at all.

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