For the first time in his years of attending Pearl Harbor anniversary remembrance ceremonies in Spokane, on Thursday, Coeur d’Alene’s Ray Garland was the lone survivor at the event.

“Last year there were a couple others, but they have passed. There just isn’t hardly anybody left,” he said.

Garland, 95, said he considers himself to be fortunate that he’s still around 76 years later.

“A lot of friends are no longer with me,” he said. “That’s a lonesome feeling. But, after this long, I just feel lucky to be here.”

Garland said he spent part of Thursday thinking about that infamous day as he does every now and then.

“I saw the Japanese bomb Ford Island and watched the Arizona blow up right behind us,” said Garland, who was on the USS Tennessee. “You never forget something like that. We had a hard time putting out the oil (fire) from the Arizona, and I helped with the fire hose.”

Garland counts his blessings that he’s still able to get around without a walker or wheelchair.

“I think my genes are right,” he said, referring to why he believes he’s doing well health-wise.

Garland was just finishing up the 4 to 8 a.m. watch on the USS Tennessee on Dec. 7, 1941 when he saw dive bombers coming in from one side and torpedoes from the other.

“I looked back over my shoulder and I saw these planes coming in and this corporal says, ‘Hey, turn around Garland,’ so I turned around, and the next thing I knew, from about here to across the street, here comes a Japanese dive bomber,” Garland said last year, when he was interviewed for a story about the 75th anniversary of the attack. “I could see the goggles of one of the (Japanese) pilots. They bombed all the airfields first.”

When the second attack came, Garland went below decks to grab a fire hose to fight off the flames. The blaze was so intense that it knocked him back and he suffered facial injuries.

For his efforts, Garland received the first of his two Purple Heart medals.

“It was just part of the job — nothing heroic about it,” he said, in 2016. “We were trying to keep the burning oil away that was coming from the (USS) Arizona.”

The other Purple Heart was for being shot in the leg during the Korean War.