Garry Dunnigan held a sheath of photographs of his late father, George, as he sat with his family at the USS Constitution Museum on Saturday, 83 years to the day after George Dunnigan survived the attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The elder Dunnigan, a chief warrant officer in the US Navy, was getting dressed for Sunday Mass on Dec. 7, 1941, when he heard explosions outside his battleship and climbed to the top deck.
“He could see one of the Japanese fighter pilots flying overhead and see the expression on his face. He said, ‘That’s how low it was,’ ’’ George Dunnigan’s nephew, John DiThomas, said in an interview Saturday, recalling his uncle’s account of the attack.
Everything afterward was a blur.
“It was quite an ordeal for him. He didn’t talk much about it,’’ Garry Dunnigan said.
Dunnigan and DiThomas were among dozens of people gathered at the museum in Charlestown Navy Yard to commemorate the anniversary of the historic attack, which killed 2,393 Americans and led the United States to declare war on Japan, marking the nation’s entry into World War II.
“Today we come together not just to commemorate a tragedy, but to remember resilience,’’ Massachusetts Deputy Secretary of Veterans Services Andrea Gayle-Bennett said.
Following speeches by Gayle-Bennett and other state officials, a color guard led a procession to the USS Cassin Young, a decommissioned battleship docked at the Navy Yard, for a wreath-laying ceremony honoring those who perished in the attack.
The USS Cassin Young was named for a Navy commander who steered his ship, the USS Vestal, to safety during the attack, saving the ship and thousands of lives.
Young personally manned the Vestal’s anti-aircraft gun at the beginning of the attack. When the nearby USS Arizona was hit, Young was thrown overboard and swam back to his ship amid burning oil on the water. Once aboard, Young unmoored the Vestal from the “blazing inferno’’ of the Arizona and navigated to safer waters, according to Michael Creasey, general superintendent of the national parks in Boston.
In 1942, Young received the Medal of Honor for his heroism that day. Creasey read Young’s original medal citation in front of the USS Cassin Young on Saturday before joining other speakers to drop a wreath from its deck into Boston Harbor.
December marks the 81st anniversary of the USS Cassin Young’s commissioning. In 1944, the ship served in the Pacific Theater, where it suffered a strike off the Japanese island of Okinawa, killing 23 men. It was decommissioned in 1960.
“The ship represents the experience of hundreds of crew members who served aboard,’’ Creasey told attendees.
One of those crew members was present Saturday. Tom Worthen, 89, served on the USS Cassin Young from 1957 to 1960. He remembers hearing news of the attack on the radio when he was 8. “I had never seen my father so shocked by what was going on in the world,’’ Worthen said.
He attends the Pearl Harbor anniversary ceremony at the Navy Yard every year and often reunites there with other veterans of the ship. Worthen hopes the vessel’s second life as a museum will keep enthusiasm for the Navy alive.
“Hopefully it inspires some kids who come through and say, ‘Gee, I want to end up going into the Navy, and I want to go into ROTC, I want to go to college. I want to get a commission and serve the country,’’’ Worthen said.
Young attendees expressed gratitude for the organizers of the ceremony. Such events “help us appreciate all the sacrifice that people in the Army went through so that we could have the freedom and peace that we have now,’’ said Josiah Kondo, who came to the event with dozens of members of Antioch Baptist Church in Cambridge.
For Alysha Dunnigan, the granddaughter of Pearl Harbor survivor George Dunnigan, the ceremony provided an opportunity to remember the grandfather she never got to know. George Dunnigan died when she was 2.
“It’s nice to come to things like this, to kind of feel connected to him,’’ Alysha Dunnigan said. “He was able to get out. But it’s nice to come here and honor all the people who unfortunately lost their lives.’’
►Two Pearl Harbor survivors attend Hawaii ceremony. A11
