PHOENIX — Nelson Mitchell Jr. was believed to be the last Black survivor of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Later in life, it was a story he proudly shared with his community. But his son, Nelson Mitchell III said they didn't discuss his experiences much when he was a child.
"We rarely talked one on one about what the military was like," the younger Mitchell said.
But as they both got older, he said his father started to share the experiences he had kept to himself for so many years, both through pictures and video.
In a 2011 family recording, the elder detailed his eight years aboard Navy destroyers, including his time serving on the USS Jarvis, where the then 20-year-old found himself in the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
"I was in the bed. I was in my bunk. Just laying down in the bunk. I wasn't sleep. All of a sudden, the bombing starts shaking the ship," Mitchell Jr said in the video.
Moored just across the harbor from the ill-fated USS Arizona, he described how as his day was beginning, so did the bombing.
"He said the water was black with oil. And (there was) smoke on top of--smoking fires on top of the water," the younger Mitchell told ABC15.
He'd enlisted a year earlier to help support his parents and seven brothers and sisters who worked a farm in northeast Texas.
"His monthly paycheck was $21. And he was sending probably 11 or $12 back to Texas."
During the attack, the Jarvis had been spared the worst.
Mitchell Jr. recalled, "There were some guys who only got (hit by) shrapnel."
So once everyone was back on board the sailors got to work looking for Japanese forces.
"On the Jarvis, we patrolled out to sea. And I got the life jacket on, and I kept that light jacket on day and night. Didn't even pull it off," he said.
He'd only been assigned to the ship for a couple of weeks.
His assignment, like so many other Black seamen during the era of segregation in the US Navy, was a steward.
The often-thankless job of serving others in the middle of chaos.
That resilience is a trait that Mitchell Jr said his father carried with him throughout his life and shared with his children.
"Taking care of whatever job needed to be done. Not screwing around," Mitchell III said of his father.
The Mitchell family moved to Arizona during his last year in the Navy, settling in the south Phoenix community of Okemah, then to Peoria where he became known for growing a yard full of roses and later his military service.
"There was always people wanting to stop by to learn about these roses," the younger Mitchell said. "In the midst of that, I mean, there was always an opportunity to talk about what else he had done in his life."
He credits his father's participation in Pearl Harbor survivor groups with his willingness to begin to share his experiences later in life.
Mitchell Jr passed away in 2018 at the age of 98 and was believed to be the last Black survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack.
