Glenn Lane lived to be 93 after surviving the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Sept. 12, he was laid to rest inside the USS Arizona so he could return to the shipmates he left behind.
A Navy diver placed an urn with his ashes in a gun turret aboard the Arizona during a ceremony Sept. 12. He’s the 36th survivor of the attack to be interred on the Arizona.
Lane was a seaplane radioman on Dec. 7, 1941, when bombs hit the Arizona. He later recalled being thrown into the water with no life jacket, and swimming as best he could. He saw Ford Island but didn’t think he could make it that far so he swam to the nearby USS Nevada instead. Then the Nevada was hit too.
His daughter, Trish Lane Anderson, said he always wanted to go back.
“When he got blown into the water and he got to the surface and he looked back, he said all he could see was body parts. It always stayed in his mind so crystal clear,” Anderson said. “That that was his dream – to be able to go back there.”
Lane retired in Oak Harbor, Wash., as a master chief after 30 years in the Navy. He suffered shrapnel wounds and burns, but didn’t receive a Purple Heart until 2004.
He passed away Dec. 10 – just over seven decades after the attack.
Most of the 12 ships that sank or were beached in the attack were removed from the harbor, repaired and return to service. Just the USS Utah and the Arizona remain in the water.
The Navy began interring and scattering ashes of Dec. 7 survivors in the harbor in the late 1980s, and hundreds have since been laid to rest this way. The ceremonies grew in number as more survivors heard about them.
The vast majority have had their ashes scattered. Only survivors of the Arizona and the Utah may return in death to their ships.
