He still remembers the sunrise over Pearl Harbor 66 years ago today.

“Oh, it was an absolutely beautiful morning.”

Laughing, the 87-year-old veteran also remembers the early morning headache he was nursing due to the “previous night’s foolishness.”

And then, at about 5 minutes before 8 on Dec. 7, 1941, the sound of bombs. He remembers the sounds made by men trapped inside overturned ships. Men tapping on the hull, letting potential rescuers know where they were. Visions of body parts washing up on the shore.

Indeed, Giles Bacon Jr., an Iowa native and now Vicksburg resident, remembers well that time and place which has lived “in infamy.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise to the United States as a nation and to Bacon as a person who was there and has lived to tell about it. On that morning, planes and submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy under the command of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto executed a two-wave, 44-minute bombardment on Hawaii.

Despite assertions that the attack could have been predicted and prevented, the American forces at Pearl Harbor were expecting nothing beyond another sunrise, another Sunday morning in one of the world’s most scenic places. Overall, 21 ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet were damaged. More than 2,400 soldiers and civilians died and nearly 1,200 more were injured. The attack drew the United States into World War II.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared it “a date which will live in infamy.”

Sitting at his Enchanted Drive home Thursday, Bacon, who moved to Vicksburg from Harrison, Iowa, one year ago, talked about that day on Ford Island, a land mass in the center of Pearl Harbor, showing maps of the U.S. Naval Station at the time of the attack.

Bacon, then a 21-year-old military policeman with the Marines, had arrived on the Pacific island three months earlier to take over as commander of the military jail on Ford Island. Upon hearing explosions on the morning of Dec. 7, Bacon, in bed, looked out his window to see Japanese aircraft. Bacon said he then left his bunk on one side of Ford Island, which he said was small enough to travel all the way around in 20 minutes by bicycle, and went to the other side to help as he could.

There, Bacon said sailors, who weren’t trapped, had been ordered to abandon ship. Doing so as fast as possible, some jumped into the harbor in nothing but their “skivvies.” Men wore whatever clothing they could find, adding to the confusion.

“A private would be wearing an admiral’s uniform, or an admiral might be wearing a captain’s uniform,” Bacon said. “It was impossible to know who should be ordering who.”

Bacon also described how much of the harbor was on fire, with fuel and oil from the ships floating and burning.

“It was just absolute chaos,” he said.

In the end, Bacon said those who died were buried, being placed in body bags and put in mass graves.

“Myself and many others lost a lot of close friends over there.”

But as history tells the story, the United States would prevail, with Japanese forces, as well as German, surrendering less than four years later.

Born in Thompson, Iowa, in April 1920, Bacon grew up in the Des Moines area and joined the Marines in 1939. Last year, Bacon came to Vicksburg to reside with Marian Ables, who has helped take care of him since his health has worsened.

“I think she’s the best nurse in all of Mississippi,” Bacon said. “Some people think she deserves a medal just for putting up with me.”

Mrs. Ables was married to Ross Ables Sr., a friend of Bacon’s for nearly 60 years, during and after they served together. The two soldiers met when Mr. Ables arrived at Pearl Harbor 10 days after the attack. In 2000, both Mr. Ables and Bacon’s wife, June, died.

Though Pearl Harbor is nearly 70 years past, it remains a focus in Bacon’s life. He is the president of the Iowa Veterans of Pearl Harbor, which he said was initiated by 15 veterans, including himself, in a tavern 51 years ago.

Bacon said he has looked for fellow Pearl Harbor veterans in Vicksburg since arriving, but with no success. According to the Mississippi Tax Commission, specialized Pearl Harbor veteran tags were sold to only 33 Mississippians in 2005.

Today is the Iowa group’s annual Dec. 7 Breakfast Meeting in Des Moines, an event Bacon said he is missing for the first time. And it’s at those gatherings that Bacon said something “wonderful” seems to happen every year.

“Someone outside of the group seems to always pick up the tab,” he said. “And it’s unbelievable when people show that kind of appreciation.

“We did what we did because we had to. But when people express gratitude like that, or just simply tell us thank you for our service, boy, that’s awfully wonderful.”