When Bob Fernandez joined the Navy in August 1941, his innocence was forgivable.
Only 17, he had grown up in San Jose and quit school after eighth grade. Quick with his hands and feet, he followed his older brother on the local boxing circuit and was ready for new opportunities.
Four months later, on Dec. 7, Fernandez came of age.
Reflecting on his enlistment, he once said, “I just thought I was gonna go dancing all the time, have a good time, see the world. What’d I do? I got caught in the war.”
One of the country’s last survivors of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, Fernandez died Wednesday in Lodi, Calif. He was 100. His death brings the number of Pearl Harbor survivors to a little more than a dozen.
Fernandez had planned to attend the 83th Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day on Saturday, the same day he was profiled in The Times. He would have joined two other Pearl Harbor survivors — ages 102 and 104 — at the annual commemoration in Hawaii.
Until recently, Fernandez had been in good health. He was an avid dancer and a regular at a restaurant and dance hall in Stockton. But late last month, he was hospitalized because of an infection, and his family decided against the trip to Hawaii.