News 12 at 6 o'clock, December 7, 2009

AUGUSTA, Ga.---It was 68 years ago on Monday when the Japanese Army bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack immediately plunged the U.S. into World War II and rewrote American history, forever.

Sadly the number of survivors, or witnesses, decreases with every passing year, but for one six year old boy-- the image of smoke over the Hawaiian harbor will never go away.

December 7, 1941 started out just like any other Sunday for Major General Perry Smith. He was 6 years old and was in a truck bed full of kids on the way to Sunday school near Pearl Harbor.

"Everything was fine until we got to the post and they stopped us at the main gate and turned the truck around, didn't tell us anything in the back and started running us back home at a high rate of speed, so it was very scary," says Major Smith.

It may have been just days away from his 7th birthday, but the images are still etched in his mind.

"As we looked out the back of the truck we could see a lot of smoke and a lot of air planes flying around and some of the older kids figured out that we were under attack," says Major Smith.

"I was six and I was very frightened and crying and hanging on to the bench so that the truck wouldn't throw me out the back," adds Major Smith.

But there's no way that young boy could have realized how big the moment was.

"It is the single most important day in the 20th Century for America because it not only got us into the war, but it forced us into world events, and world politics forever. It all happened on that day, 68 years ago today," says Major Smith.

And 68 years later, Major Smith may very well be one of the youngest witnesses.

"I kept saying to myself, if I live to be a really old guy, I may be the last witness, who can remember. Because I can remember I was six, but if you were much younger than six, you probably can't remember," adds Major Smith.

As each year goes by, fewer and fewer are here to remember, and smith hopes you take the day to think about them.

"All of them now are in their 80's, 90's or beyond age 100 many of them of course were badly wounded in the war so their health is rather fragile so we really need to thank them quickly because they will not be with us much longer," says Major Smith.

Major Smith says after the attack he and his sister, mother, and grandmother spent the next few days in the basement armed with a pistol and a baseball bat worried the Japanese would invade.

Years later, he himself would join the military, following in his dad's footsteps.

Major Smith says once he got back to Minnesota a few months later teachers and friends would press him to tell his story -- a story he's told now countless times over the last 68 years.