They were there. Survivors of Pearl Harbor attack share memories at USF.

Troy Sullivan, 98, still remembers looking into the sky over Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and seeing the planes coming. Thinking they were Americans, he began to raise his hand to salute, but then the bombs began to fall.

“We thought the planes were ours until they dropped the torpedoes into the water,” Sullivan said. “I can’t tell you the word I said, but it starts with an S.”

Now 98 and soon to become a great-great grandfather, the veteran is one of the increasingly few survivors of the infamous attack. On Wednesday evening, Sullivan and other veterans were honored on the grounds of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee during a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the attack.

The event was a benefit for the Office of Veteran Services at the college. David Haenel, an attorney with The Law Place, presented USF Veteran Services Administrator Todd Hughes with a check for $12,500 at the end of the evening.

Included in the crowd of veterans were five honored guests: Sullivan, Bob O’Neill, Robert Kabat, William E. Iredale and Richard F. Cumbo. O’Neill and Sullivan were both at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack; Iredale, Kabat and Cumbo are all World War II veterans.

The veterans, all in their 90s, shared their memories of World War II with attendees. A group of high school students gathered around Sullivan to shake his hand.

“It’s an amazing experience that you can’t get out of a textbook,” said Victoria Sinclair, 16.

Two of the veterans — O’Neill and Iredale — were just 16 years old themselves when they signed up to fight. O’Neill was in the Navy Reserves, and Iredale said he lied about his age when he registered.

O’Neill, dressed in his Navy dress whites and seated in a wheelchair, described the attack.

“They flew right over us. We could see the pilot,” O’Neill said. “We didn’t know what the hell was going on. Between the bombs and the planes, you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

O’Neill had just arrived to Pearl Harbor on the Wednesday before the attack, and he spent his first four days on the island visiting Honolulu. He said he went from seeing hula girls in Honolulu to spending 30 hours picking up dead bodies and survivors out of the water.

“A lot of the guys out there became grown men in about 15 minutes,” he said.

O’Neill went on to spend 37 years in the Navy, but it wasn’t until his active duty ended that the horrors of what he witnessed 75 years ago began to sink in. As Pearl Harbor has become more of a historical event and the witnesses to that event are ever decreasing, O’Neill said he has been asked increasingly to talk about what he saw that day.

“I’m just starting to realize over the last few years what happened,” he said. “You knew it was bad at the time, but you didn’t realize how bad. It was horrifying when it dawned on me.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2016 at 8:47 PM with the headline "They were there. Survivors of Pearl Harbor attack share memories at USF.."