Lewis Walters was 16 years old when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor.

Born in Kaimuki, he was an apprentice at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and was driving to work as the attack began. On Sunday, he recalled dodging machine gun fire as he drove.

He said he quickly got to work as serv­ice members fought back and civilian workers chipped in with supporting roles. Walters said he felt powerless as the Japanese forces dropped bombs and sprayed bullets.

“I could throw rocks at the airplanes, that’s all we could do. We could see the pilots look down at us grinning and there was nothing we could do about it,” Walters said.

Some time after the attack Walters would join the U.S. Army, where he became a staff sergeant in the Signal Corps.

Walters was one of several veterans and Pearl Harbor attack survivors getting a tour of historic sites in Pearl Harbor on Sunday as part of the 80th Anniversary Commemoration hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service.

Of the few remaining service members who were in Hawaii on the day of the attack, all are into their late 90s. The surprise attack on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941, mainly targeted Pearl Harbor but also struck other military installations around Oahu and left a lasting impact on military and local communities alike.

Herbert Elfring, 99, was a soldier at Camp Malakole when the attack began. He was a 19-year-old California National Guardsman whose unit had been activated for duty in Hawaii as tensions were running high in the Pacific between the U.S. and Japan. But on that Sunday morning, Elfring had the day off.

“I could hear the bombing down Pearl Harbor way, but thought maybe that must be just an exercise that somebody is performing you know, for practice,” he recalled.

He said he didn’t think much of it until a plane flew overhead strafing him and fellow troops with bullets. He said he looked up at the plane’s fuselage and saw the red circle denoting it as a Japanese fighter plane and realized they were under attack.

“It was fast,” he said of the attack. He recalled having two close calls as Japanese forces tried to kill him.

But Elfring went on to serve in campaigns in Fiji, Bougainville and the Philippines.

Elfring has been attending anniversary events for years and said he’s thankful to still be healthy enough to participate.

“It’s good to get back and be able to participate in the remembrance of the day,” he said.

Dorinda Makanaonalani Nicholson, an author who recounted her experience in her memoir Pearl Harbor Child, was 6 years old on the day of the attack. She was having breakfast with her family in Pearl City as planes began flying overhead. “Their canopies were pushed back, and you can see the pilots and you can see (their) goggles,” she recalled.

As explosions rang out her father gathered the family and fled the home, driving away into the sugar cane fields to hide. They were unable to return to their home for a week until unexploded bombs that landed around were cleared. Nicholson remembered the war years as a difficult time as the island fell under martial law and news came back of young men dying abroad.

“War isn’t romantic,” said Nicholson. But she said that it’s heartening to see the reconciliation between Japan and the United States in the years since the attack.

“In my life ‘remember Pearl Harbor’ used to really mean ‘remember to hate,’” Nicholson said. “How wonderful that we are friends because there’s a war going on somewhere, always.”

Walters said he left the Army after World War II and joined the Navy. He would serve in Vietnam hunting Viet Cong guerillas, tracking arms smuggling routes in the Southeast Asian country’s winding waterways. He said he made the acquaintance of Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, who commanded Navy forces in Vietnam.

Walters said that when Zumwalt was nominated to take on the role of Navy Chief of Operations, he asked Walters if he’d be willing to join his staff in Washington, D.C. But by then Walters had seen enough war.

“I told him ‘I’m a bare footed Hawaiian, I belong in Hawaii,’” Walters recalled. “I said I want nothing to do with Washington. I just want to go back to my grass shack in Hawaii.”