Pearl Harbor survivor Rolland Briar dies at 104

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Pearl Harbor survivor Rolland Briar of Green Bay, Wisconsin died Saturday at the age of 104, the Pearl Harbor National Memorial confirmed.

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Briar was on the deck of the USS Whitney, waiting for a motor launch to take him to church when the Dec. 7, 1941, attack began.

“Because I was with flag allowance, we had no battle stations,” Briar later recalled. “Due to the strafing by the Japanese planes, we were ordered to go below deck as some were killed on deck. We had five destroyers tied next to us and would have been a prize target.”

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Briar helped reassign survivors to other ships in the days following the attack.

He later transferred to the USS Markab, then to Magazine Island on Pearl Harbor before eventually becoming an officer, serving at the Naval Air Station on Saipan until July 1946.

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