Pearl Harbor: Navy man survived on USS Arizona

Metro Atlanta

Photos: Doug Green, who died in December 2007, was Georgia's last survivor of the Japanese attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Clay Douglas Green Jr. was Georgia's last survivor of the battleship USS Arizona, sunk in the horrific Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 67 years ago, an act that propelled America into war.

Doug Green's widow, Hazel Green, wishes her husband had not lived and died in anonymity. She drove from Lawrenceville every day to the VA hospital on Clairmont Road in Decatur to visit him the last six years of his life. He died on Christmas Eve 2007.

Clay Douglas Green Jr. in a photo at age 19. Doug Green became a gunner's mate first class in the Navy. At 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, he was on his way off the battleship Arizona to mail Christmas cards when he heard strange noises overhead. He knew it wasn't a drill when 351 Japanese fighters dotted the cloudy skies over Hawaii.

Doug Green in the VA hospital, suffering from a form of muscular dystrophy. When he recalled the attack on the USS Arizona, he remembered a "sea of bodies." Only 335 men survived; 1,177 perished.

This year will be the first anniversary of his death -- the first Hazel will spend without him. He was buried with honors at Georgia National Cemetery in Canton.

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Clay Douglas Green Jr. was Georgia's last survivor of the battleship USS Arizona, sunk in the horrific Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 67 years ago, an act that propelled America into war.

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