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Jack Robinson, 89 and a Pearl Harbor survivor, with photo of himself while in the Navy. (Photo by Shaina Sullivan)

If Jack Robinson joined the Navy to see the world, he got to see some of the worst that it has to offer on Dec. 7, 1941, aboard the USS Maryland battleship.

Robinson, now 89 and a resident at the William R. Courtney State Veterans Home in Temple, was 24 years old and serving as a fire patrol technician on the Maryland when hundreds of Japanese aircraft descended on Pearl Harbor, torpedoing and bombing American ships moored along Battleship Row.

The Maryland was one of seven battleships on Battleship Row. An eighth, the Pennsylvania, was in dry dock. The ninth, the USS Colorado, was being overhauled on the West Coast.

The attack was wildly successful from the Japanese viewpoint. Much of the American fleet was destroyed or damaged and 2,403 Americans were killed. Another 1,178 military and civilian personnel were wounded.

Robinson was among the wounded. He took a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder from one of the bombs. His son, Bill Robinson of The Woodlands, still has the shrapnel and the shirt his father was wearing on that

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