What would become a dark day in history exploded in front of his shocked eyes 74 years ago.
And had he been a minute earlier to breakfast, 99-year-old James A. Seals might not have lived to tell the tale.
Seals is one of the last living survivors of the infamous sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when more than 2,400 Americans were killed.
He's still alert, stands ramrod straight and gives a firm handshake. And Seals still cuts a gallant figure in his Air Force uniform crowded with ribbons for service, including two presidential commendations.
The Cumberland County resident vividly recalls the Pearl Harbor bombing -- he says it's seared into his brain.
Seals was a Marine Corps private then who had arrived in Hawaii a week earlier. The native of tiny Pikeville, Tenn., in the Cumberland Plateau said he was on his way to have breakfast aboard the USS Pennsylvania, in dry dock in the Navy Yard next to sister battleships the USS Cassin and USS Downes.
He was some 200 feet away, he says, when the unimaginable happened.
Chaos erupted. Warplanes swooped down, dropping bombs and firing machine guns.
Seals said he dove for cover in a nearby roadside ditch.
"I didn't know what was going on," he said. "I had to find a hole to get in."
The Pennsylvania was bombed in the first wave of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in what President Franklin D. Roosevelt would soon unforgettably describe as a "date that will live in infamy."
The crew members of that battleship, which later extracted a heavy toll on the enemy in the Pacific Theater, were among the first to return fire.
The nearby battleships Cassin and Downes, also in dry dock, were rocked by explosions sparked by raging fires from a ruptured fuel tank.
Both vessels were "pretty well destroyed," Seals said, "and just about everybody (on board) was killed. There were bodies lying around everywhere."
It was only later that day that he learned the full extent of the attack, which launched U.S. entry into World War II.
After the hours-long attack ended, Seals said he went back to the USS George F. Elliott, the transport carrier where was he was stationed, "and got my thoughts together."
Over the next two days, Seals said he was assigned a grisly task: retrieving the two sets of dogtags off those killed on the Cassin and the Downes.
One set went into a gallon bucket, he said. The other dog tag had a notch in it, used to wedge between the victims' teeth for identification.
"I was so busy, I didn't have time to think," Seals said.
For Seals, it was the start of years of battle in the Pacific Theater.
He was in the Battle of Midway and numerous other engagements. He recalled being dug in on one island while Japanese subs surfaced at night and took aim at suspected Allied outposts.
"We didn't want to fire back because it would have revealed our positions," he said.
During the Battle of Guadalcanal, when he was a second lieutenant, Seals said he was sent to take over a 500-man unit and wondered why such a low-ranking officer would be assigned such responsibilities.
"I asked the first sergeant, 'What the hell am I doing here?' "
"He said he'd already lost the six previous officers," Seals recalled. "He said, 'If you don't listen to me, you'll be the next one killed.' "
Seals said during that campaign, he was promoted within three weeks from private to captain.
Seals emerged unscathed from his wartime years, later transferred into the Air Force and retired from military service as a lieutenant colonel. He then began a second career as an educator and school principal.
Now a resident of Lake Tansi Village, Seals lives with his daughter, Dr. Michele McConnell.
Seals says he doesn't know of another veteran of Pearl Harbor in the region. Estimates a year ago put the number of remaining survivors at between 2,000 and 2,500.
As Seals recalled his wartime exploits while seated in full uniform last week in the hallway of Crossville Outlet Mall, two strangers walked by at different times and greeted Seals.
"Thank you for your service," they both said, while shaking the ancient warrior's hand.
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