John Martin was on his way to the shower when the world changed.

In just a few minutes, amid the pervasive wail of the USS Tennessee's general alarm, the storekeeper 1st class from North Dakota would be handing anti-aircraft shells up over his head to the big guns. Afterward, and for the next three days, he'd be fishing dead bodies out of the water. But, at 10 minutes to 8 that Sunday morning in paradise, Martin was whistling on his way to shower.

Harold Bruschwein was in the park.

Agnes Shurr was fast asleep.

Clement Lonski was below decks on a supply ship that was circling just outside the placid waters of Pearl Harbor.

It was December. Mele Kalikimaka was the thing to say. Soon, though, everyone was speechless.

"We heard these explosions, and Ikind of assumed the Navy was doing some practicing until this plane came right at us," said Bruschwein, who was performing a troop inspection at his unit's temporary headquarters in a Honolulu park. "I looked up and realized it was a Japanese plane. It's a weird feeling to look up and see the different insignia on the plane. Then we drove over and saw the ships burning and all the people dying. Your life expectancy becomes pretty short. It was very, very chaotic."

Five battleships, including the Arizona and West Virginia, which flanked Martin's ship, were sunk. About 2,400 Americans were killed in the surprise attack orchestrated by Japan.

Sixty-five years have passed since the day that will live in infamy. Martin doesn't see the bodies floating by anymore.

"Time heals all wounds, I guess," the Bismarck man said last week.

It helps to talk about things, too. For years after the war, he and several others gathered once a year to relive Pearl Harbor. The North Dakota chapter of thePearl Harbor Survivors Association earned its charter in 1966. The annual meeting gave about 30 men and women, and their families, an excuse to reconnect.

"When you visit with people who have had the same experiences, they understand exactly what you went through," Bruschwein, from Wahpeton, said. "You really have a better communication with them than with people who have not experienced that sort of thing. It brings back memories. Not good ones, necessarily, but you talk about them."

Years piled up on top of years. The "greatest generation" got old. Local spark plugs like Milt Gittel and George Paul have died.

This year, the membership was down to four: Martin, Bruschwein, Lonski and Shurr. So they voted to give up their charter. They held their last meeting in April. A suitcase full of pictures and newsletters is all that remains of the group. Oh, and a flag in the trunk of Martin's car. He's taking that to the North Dakota Heritage Center.

"It's time to be done," Martin, 85, said. "There are no more members. When all of us get together, we don't even have enough for a quorum. Pretty soon there won't be anybody left to even give it away, so now's the time to be done."

Bruschwein, 91, said the old friends plan to get together whenever they can. Just less formally.

That is a trend brought on by necessity, the national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association said.

"We're getting extinct as the dodo bird," President Mal Middlesworth said. "It's happening in all the chapters. We've never had many chapters in the Dakotas, but in some of the more populated states the same thing is happening."

At its peak - during the 50th anniversary of the attack - the association had about 18,000 members, Middlesworth said. Now it's down to a little less than 5,000.

When Lonski, 86, joined the North Dakota chapter, there were five other men from Jamestown enrolled. Now he's the only one.

"It's just been a nice group to belong to,"Lonski said. "People there recognized how you carry on afterwards. It was nice to get together. Hopefully, we can still meet for dinner or whatever."

On Friday, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., presented flags to Lonski, Bruschwein and Martin in a ceremony at the Bismarck AMVETS Club. The flags had flown over the USSArizona Memorial.

Shurr, a member of the Navy Nurses Corps during the war, now lives in Grand Forks. She was unable to attend the ceremony. Shurr was asleep on a hospital ship in Pearl Harbor when the bombs started falling, and tended to new patients for three straight days. Most of the injured soldiers that populated the hospital ship survived.

After the attack, a country was awakened and charged headlong into a war that, if it didn't end all wars, at least brought to a conclusion the horrific acts being perpetrated by Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini.

The soldiers who came home began to contribute to a prospering economy, and America experienced a golden age. The soldiers, nurses and others started families and went about their lives. The lives for which they fought.

The name of Shurr's ship, by the way, was the USS Solace.

Fitting.

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@;bismarck tribune.com.)