"I just start crying:" Local 101-year-old veteran recalls experience at Pearl Harbor

One of the survivors, a 101-year-old veteran of WWII, lives right here in North Carolina. For him, the memories are still painfully clear, even eight decades later.

Roy "Swede" Boreen, who lives in Pinehurst, was a sailor aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

As his ship capsized, he jumped into the water.

"It was a day I'd never forget," said Boreen.

He can still hear the announcement, in all its urgency, aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

"I just remember they were sounding 'General Quarters!' General Quarters!' This is the real thing," he said.

General Quarters. That means get to your battle stations – now.

"We took nine torpedoes. We completely capsized," he said. "And I lost 423 of my shipmates."

He lost many of his friends that day – best friends, he'll tell you.

"I was one of the lucky ones to get off," he said.

Even after 80 years, Boreen still feels the 'infamy' of the day. For him, infamy feels like a huge ship listing badly beneath his feet as Japanese bombers swarm through Hawaiian skies. Infamy smells like fuel gushing out of the ship's tank, ripped open by a torpedo.

"It was a terrible experience," he said.

Five years ago, on the 75th anniversary, Boreen told WRAL how he jumped overboard, and how the water was thick with oil.

Infamy, for him, is bobbing alone in an oil-slicked harbor, having watched a mighty American ship disappear.

"I saw the Arizona go down," he said.

He was 21 years old, adrift in what would become the grave of many fellow Americans. But, at last, he was rescued by the battleship Maryland. He was given dry clothes and a cigarette – and a shoulder.

"I couldn't hold the tears back. I just had a good cry," he said.

The memory of that attack still brings tears to his eyes.

"When I stop to think about it, I just start crying," he said. "I just can't hold back the tears. Losing my best friends."

Boreen is one of the few, these vanishing few, who remember the infamy first-hand. His memory has faded, but the heroic essence is still there.

He wears a ring on his finger to commemorate Pearl Harbor survivors.

"Lest we forget, 1941," he said.