As the nation absorbs the aftereffects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the minds of many Americans draw parallels to Dec. 7, 1941.

Although the 9-11 tragedies claimed more lives, the air strike on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago Friday took place on a larger scale.

Inland residents alive today who remember the earlier catastrophe are a dwindling breed. Now in their 60s, 70s and older, all have the attack seared into their psyches. Child or adult, civilian or military, each had a unique vantage point during the historic event.

Here are their stories:

LEONARD "JACK" MASON, 81, Riverside

Dec. 7, 1941: Ensign, Gunnery Officer

USS Tennessee (BB-43)

"It was incredible," says Jack Mason. "You're sitting out there in probably one of the most beautiful places on earth. Everything is so relaxing and beautiful, then suddenly it's chaos."

The Tennessee was tied up to a concrete quay on Battleship Row. In front of her was the Maryland and astern, the Arizona. The West Virginia was moored on the Tennessee's port (right) side.

Mason had been below deck checking on some men scraping paint. On his way back topside he heard some "thuds" and a bugle sounding general quarters.

He ordered the work crew up. And as he was climbing topside he spotted some of his men lined up outside the ship's magazine, where ammunition for .50-caliber and 3-inch surface guns was stored.

"They didn't have approval to open the magazines because the captain was ashore. So I told the gunner's mate I'd take responsibility for bringing the ammo topside," Mason recalls.

"While we were hauling ammo up, everything broke loose . . . torpedoes were hitting the West Virginia, California and Oklahoma, and bombs were dropping on us and the Arizona. By the time I got back up on deck the Arizona already had blown up and the Oklahoma capsized."

Mason says the Tennessee was swathed in black oil smoke blown from the Arizona on the prevailing wind.

"When you're right in midst of something, you don't really see as much as when you're just a little bit removed . . . We were surrounded by catastrophe and smoke. So we couldn't see planes to shoot at them.

"But fortunately they couldn't see us either because of the smoke and thought they had sunk us . . . ."

That night, while Mason stood gun watch on the bridge, U.S. Navy carrier planes came in with their lights on over Ford Island. He recognized them as friendly and told his men not to shoot.

"About 500 guns opened up on them from every place . . . but not from our ship," he says.

PEYTON D. SMITH, 79, Riverside

Dec. 7, 1941: quartermaster third class

USS Rigel (ARb-1)

Known as "Smitty" among his Navy pals, Smith had just gone on watch aboard the destroyer tender Rigel. The vessel was undergoing major repairs in the shipyard about a quarter mile across the harbor from Battleship Row.

Smith was just about to hoist the American flag at the Rigel's fantail as buglers sounded "morning colors" on ships all along the slip.

Then he saw a formation of aircraft sweeping in from the southeast over Merrys Point, making a beeline for Battleship Row.

"At first I thought our planes were practicing," Smith recalls. "When one plane, about even with our ship, dropped a torpedo I thought, `Well, our planes are practicing on the battleships.' I didn't think much of it until another dropped his `fish.' "

He dropped the flag when the first torpedoes hit the West Virginia and Oklahoma. Then Smith ran to the quarterdeck.

"I told the officer of the deck, who was reading the Sunday papers, we were being attacked. He thought I was kidding and continued reading."

At that moment a bomb dropped into the slip, spraying the Rigel and several nearby ships with shrapnel that injured some sailors.

Smith's job during the air raid was to record everything he saw in a log. "I saw most of the battleships hit or destroyed. I saw the USS Nevada -- hit real bad and taking on water -- steaming out of the harbor. Had she sunk there it would have bottled everyone up."

LOUIS ROFFMAN, 83, Riverside

Dec. 7, 1941: B-17 flight engineer, Army Air Corps

Stationed at Hickam Field

It was nearly 8 a.m. And "Lou" Roffman, a 20-year-old buck sergeant, was still asleep in the barracks at Hickam Field. Roffman had been out on the town and hadn't returned to base until 1:30 a.m.

When Roffman turned over for a few more winks, he heard a plane buzzing the barracks. Then came machine gun fire and an explosion in a nearby wall locker.

"It had a big hole in it. Now I knew something was wrong. I jumped into my fatigues, went downstairs and ran outside.

"I saw men who appeared to be sleeping on the parade ground. That was the first time in my life I ever saw a dead person."

Barking orders, old-time sergeants told Roffman and other flight crewmen to get to their planes, parked by hangars less than a block from the barracks.

"Some of the hangars already were on fire," he recalls.

At the flight line he climbed into his B-17. And just as Roffman was turning over the engines, Japanese Zeros came in strafing. Machine gun fire hit the prop and a cylinder on his No. 3 engine.

"I ran to the rear of the plane and got out. Some men helped me tow the plane over to its assigned bunker."

Roffman says the Hickam barracks took many hits. One bomb blew up the mess hall, killing many men.

"If I had gone for breakfast I might have gotten it, too," he says.

JOHN KRAMER, 76, Calimesa

Dec. 7, 1941: Diamond Head resident

16-year-old in 10th grade

"Up on the slopes of Diamond Head, we had a pretty good view of Pearl and Hickam Field," remembers John Kramer. "As the bird flies it was about eight miles."

On Dec. 7 he was at the breakfast table with his mother and two younger brothers. His father was out front pouring cement for a sidewalk.

"We heard a flight of planes and then the house shook. Five seconds later it shook again," he recalls. "We thought it might be the volcano on Kilauea."

Kramer figures he had heard the Japanese attackers as they came around Diamond Head across the face of Waikiki. "They passed before we knew what was going on. We didn't pay attention at first."

JACQUELYN (CANNON) BONNETT, 75, Woodcrest

Dec. 7, 1941: Island of Maui resident

High school junior

Living on Maui, Jackie Bonnett nee' Cannon didn't witness the attack. But she first heard about it while driving to a teacher's house to make a salad for a high school football celebration.

"I'll never forget Web Edwards on KGU Honolulu saying `This is the real McCoy!' " recalls Bonnett, whose father ran a store for a big plantation. "I was 15 going on 16. You're not scared at that age."

Bonnett remembers martial law and nightly blackouts. Her mother tried putting blue cellophane on the headlights. "But a warden caught us and said `No way.' So we had to drive up winding mountain roads with no lights."

Her neighborhood was shelled by enemy submarines twice in December.

"They were trying to get the oil tanks behind us but didn't hit anything," she says. About a month later soldiers from the mainland set up a gun emplacement near Bonnett's house.

"We kids spent time with them every day," she says.

William H. Bonnett Jr. still had a year to go at Riverside's Cal Poly High School when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He became a Navy pilot in 1943, soon flying F6F Hellcat fighters with VF-26 aboard the USS Santee, an oil tanker converted into a carrier. Bonnett saw action across the South Pacific.

He even flew "cover" over the USS Missouri the day the Japanese officially surrendered. A few days later Bonnett overflew A-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"We could go anyplace we wanted at that point," Bill Bonnett, 77, says.

MARTIN J. SHEMANSKI, 81, Hemet

Dec. 7, 1941: photography student

living in Plymouth, Pa.

1943-46 -- U.S. Navy photographer

Martin J. Shemanski was a 21-year-old photography student doing yardwork at his parents' Plymouth, Pa., home when a neighbor yelled that Pearl Harbor was being bombed.

When Marty Shemanski later joined the war as a photographer's mate second class aboard the USS Shangri-La (CV-38), he carved himself a niche in history.

Soon after the Japanese surrender in 1945 he flew into the city of Yokosuka at the entrance to Tokyo Bay. There he and other photographers explored a communications building that contained a photo lab.

Something in a waste basket caught Shemanski's eye.

"It was a torn up photo that somehow seemed familiar to me," he recalls. "I had been to Pearl Harbor so I recognized it as Pearl."

Once pieced together, the photo clearly showed Ford Island and Battleship Row just as the first Japanese bombs were splashing down around the still-intact Arizona and her sister ships. The picture also showed attacking aircraft buzzing menacingly over the harbor.

"It showed the first glimpse the world had seen of the attack," he says.

Shemanski and his comrades made a glass-plate negative of the original picture, which the Navy soon released to news media. Before long it became a world-famous image -- an icon symbolizing the Day of Infamy.

Life Magazine's 1976 Bicentennial Issue, "The 100 Events that Shaped America," spread the photo across two pages with the credit: "U.S. Navy; from the collection of Martin J. Shemanski."

JOHN N. PETERSEN, 80, Upland

Dec. 7, 1941: engine room machinist's mate second class

USS Dobbin (AD-3)

"I didn't see a thing," says John N. Petersen, laughing at his dubious luck.

When the attack began, Petersen was on the 8-to-12 watch in the engine room of the destroyer tender Dobbin, anchored off the end of Ford Island.

"A guy I had relieved came steaming back down from topside and said to prepare to get underway . . . that the (Japanese) were bombing us and that they had just sunk the Utah."

The USS Utah, a gunless old battleship used for target practice, had taken two torpedoes before rolling over and going down. One of the officers killed was a good friend Petersen knew from church.

"A carrier was supposed to be in that location. But none was there that day. That was fortunate," he says.

The Dobbin was at general quarters for 48 hours. "And I was below deck the whole time," Petersen says. The concussion of nearby bomb explosions popped rivets on a seam along the ship's oil tank, he says.

ROBERT E. ALEXANDER, 79, RIALTO

Dec. 7, 1941: High school senior in Navy Reserve

USS Sacramento (PG-19)

Bob Alexander, a 19-year-old from Indianapolis, had a front-row view from the Sacramento, a river gunboat moored in Pearl Harbor's Navy Yard.

Everyone aboard the training ship was a part-time Naval reservist from Indianapolis, Ind., Alexander says. The Sacramento entered Pearl Harbor in August 1941 and conducted defense patrols in Hawaiian waters.

"When the shooting started I was on the mess deck in the aft part of the ship having breakfast," he recalls. "I heard bombs and machines guns . . . then GQ. I ran up a ladder to my .30-caliber machine gun on the fantail."

Alexander stood there for what seemed nearly an hour, unable to shoot as the attack unfolded. "The captain was ashore. And he had the only key to the ammo holds." While waiting, he took pictures with a black and white camera.

Through his viewfinder Alexander saw Japanese planes drop torpedoes off the Sacramento's stern. "Their wing tips were no more than 100 feet away. I could see the pilots smiling."

He witnessed torpedoes slam into the Oklahoma, and saw its crew walk over her hull as she capsized. He watched the attacks on the Arizona and the West Virginia, where he knew a best friend was aboard.

Alexander was amazed that the enemy flew right over nearby submarines and fuel tanks but never touched them.

Finally the executive officer took over, ammo was distributed and the ship's gunners opened fire, aiding in the downing of at least two enemy planes.

"Incendiary bullets from the (Japanese) machine guns cut down the U.S. flag over my head. It was a special silk flag we always flew on Sundays."

But sheltered in a pocket between a dock and other ships, the Sacramento sustained no damage, says Alexander.

WALDEMAR "RHETT" HERMENAU, JR., 65, Moreno Valley

Dec. 7, 1941: Age 5, living at Wilhemia Rise, above Diamond Head

Son of USS Dolphin (SS-169) crewman based at Pearl Harbor

Nearly 6 years old, Rhett Hermenau was playing with a curtain rod while standing on a small stone fence behind his house.

At that moment about 15 Japanese planes flew very low, loud and fast directly over him, heading toward Pearl Harbor.

"I was so excited I jumped off the stone fence to get a better look. When I did, the curtain rod I was foolishly holding in my hand and my mouth hit the ground. The other end punctured the roof of my mouth."

Hermenau remembers that it "didn't hurt much." But the wound bled copiously, and blood streamed down his chest. He ran to the front of his house where his mother and a few lady friends were watching the attack.

"When they first saw me they almost passed out. They thought I'd been shot or somehow wounded."

Hermenau's father was a first class electrician's mate aboard the submarine Dolphin, which was undergoing major repairs at Pearl Harbor.

"During the attack my father had the watch, with a .45-caliber pistol holstered on his belt. He actually witnessed the first bomb that fell and the complete attack that followed."

When Dolphin's repairs were complete, Hermenau's dad went on his first war patrol -- departing on Christmas Eve 1941.

"During the war we only saw my father three times. But at least he survived."

Hermenau Sr. remained in the submarine service until the end of the war, retiring from the Navy as a lieutenant commander in 1957. He lived at Air Force Village West in Riverside until his death in 1999 at age 83.

ANDREW W. WENIGER, 79, HUNTINGTON BEACH

(Retired lieutenant colonel once stationed at Norton AFB)

Dec. 7, 1941: Army Air Corps truck driver

Hickam Field

Pittsburgh native Andy Weniger joined the Air Corps at 17. When the Japanese attacked he was sitting on the fender of his truck at Hickam Field, waiting for some B-17s to arrive from California. "We expected them about 8 a.m.," Weniger recalls. "We had a convoy of 32 GI trucks on the flight line. Then we heard some planes and all hell did break loose . . ."

Approximately 50 dive bombers swarmed in. "I remember seeing the red meat balls on the wings," he says.

Hickam's brand-new 3200-man barracks, then the largest in the Army Air Corps, took many direct hits killing many on the top floor. One bomb took out the 1,000-man mess hall. Thirty-five men died while eating breakfast.

Lined up three abreast, Hickam's planes -- mainly B-18s -- made easy targets. Army Air Corps generals "thought they'd be easier to defend from saboteurs lined up that way," Weniger says.

Weniger says he "prayed to God and every Catholic saint" he knew as bombs exploded around him. "I said, `Please get me through this and I'll never do anything bad again.' "

The first raid lasted 20 minutes. During a lull, Weniger and others drove back to the flight line to move the trucks. They dispersed them all over the motor pool lot. Then Japanese planes returned to strafe the field for 20 minutes, shooting men as they ran.

"After the second raid we used the trucks to haul bodies and wounded to hospitals in Honolulu," Weniger says.

In 1944, as a B-17 bombardier, Andy Weniger flew 50 combat missions over Southern Europe. He won a purple heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

DONALD J. CARNER, 80, Sun City

Dec. 7, 1941: Corporal, California National Guard

Communications man based at Camp Malakole,

Barbers Point, Oahu

Right after a cook shouted "last call for breakfast" Don Carner heard loud explosions outside his barracks door.

"I saw black smoke rising from the Pearl Harbor area," he recalls. "Next I heard low-flying aircraft and machine guns. Japanese Zeros were strafing our barracks."

Carner and a buddy set up a .50-caliber machine gun mount. As they started to install the gun, an officer yelled at them to bring the gun and follow him. They dismounted weapon and took off behind him headed for a patch of tall bushes called algarrobas.

Then the officer disappeared. Figuring the gun was no good without its mount, Carner and his comrade left it with another man who had a 30-caliber machine gun and headed back to the barracks.

Later, after one of Carner's officers "finally got things organized," the soldiers set up machine guns in their trucks, hooked their wheeled 37 mm guns to the rear and set out for Pearl Harbor just as the second attack began.

They set up their guns on the shore around the harbor's East Loch. Carner helped string communication wires to each gun position.

"We could see the ships burning and the motor launches helping men get out of the water," he says.

At about 10 p.m., from the main highway, Carner witnessed a big Navy gun open fire on friendly planes trying to land on Ford Island.

"That's all it took to set off every large and small gun that could be fired," he says. The guardsmen watched as tracer fire from 37 mm guns at Pearl's submarine base hit one of the planes, which he later learned had crashed.

"As we were out in the open with no cover, we just stood still listening to the shell fragments sizzling down around us. It was very frightening."