Leonard Brugnola is a survivor.

Brugnola was a 19-year-old seaman first class in the U.S. Navy aboard the U.S.S. Shaw at Pearl Harbor Naval Base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu when the Pacific Fleet was attacked by Japanese forces.

It was Dec. 7, 1941, a firestorm that ignited World War II.

A devout Catholic taught his faith in school by Franciscan nuns, Brugnola, 84, beat incredible odds that horrific morning, having left the U.S.S. Shaw to attend Mass inland at the precise moment when the first wave of bombs hit Pearl Harbor.

There were 185 crew members aboard the U.S.S. Shaw that day, one of 15 ships damaged in the attack. Brugnola was one of only 26 men who survived.

The World War II veteran shared his remarkable story with students at Holy Family School in Citrus Heights on Dec. 7, 2005, the 44th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Brugnola’s daughter, Barbara Marsolais, and her husband Don are both teachers at Holy Family School. It was their children who inspired him to finally speak out about what had been too painful to discuss for so many years.

“Dad never talked about it,” said Barbara Marsolais, who heard her father’s experience at Pearl Harbor for the first time when he told it to her youngest son.

“I was very close to my grandkids and read to them a lot,” said Brugnola, who noticed when he looked through the children’s history books there was very little information about Pearl Harbor. “That really stuck in my mind.”

After Brugnola attended the first U.S.S. Shaw reunion in San Francisco in 1991, he joined a group of World War II veterans sharing their Pearl Harbor experience with students. He began visiting schools near his home in Torrance in Southern California.

As Brugnola looked out over 100 seventh and eighth grade students and parents who filled Holy Family gymnasium on Dec. 7, Brugnola’s voice cracked with emotion, but he wasted no time telling them why he was there.

“I see the future of America here,” he said. “It’s up to you to carry on what you learn here today.”

Brugnola’s first life lesson came as a teen-age seaman during boot camp while stationed at Newport Training Center in Rhode Island.

“I learned about obedience, loyalty, courage, justice and charity,” he said. “If you master that, civilian life is a breeze.”

Then he recalled that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor where the U.S.S. Shaw was in dry dock. Brugnola was to take the weekend gangway watch.

But Saturday night he decided he wanted to go to St. Elizabeth Church in Aiea, and asked his friend Joseph Gaudrault to take the Sunday morning watch.

Brugnola and four others from the Shaw took a water taxi to Aiea and had just walked into the church when they heard the first explosions as airplanes swooped down on the harbor.

“My first thought was this must be some kind of mistake. It was incomprehensible,” he said.

Brugnola narrowly escaped being killed as he and the other crewmen ran back to the harbor while Japanese planes passed overhead, spraying bullets that landed just feet away.

Returning to the Naval administration building, Brugnola was assigned to the U.S.S. Pennsylvania and told to search for the wounded amid blinding smoke and screams of men trapped in debris. Too many were beyond saving.

Then Sunday evening he was given sentry duty, a night that would be the longest of his life.

“I must have said a hundred rosaries, praying like I never prayed before, waiting for daylight,” said Brugnola, who had been warned to expect a Japanese landing force attack. “I always felt someone was watching over me. I wasn’t alone.”

During a question and answer session following the presentation, one Holy Family student asked Brugnola for his thoughts about the current war in Iraq.

“Honey, they’re fighting for your generation,” he said, not skipping a beat.

Letters sent to Brugnola from Holy Family students in the weeks following his visit to the school show that many lessons have been learned from that December day.

They thanked him for serving his country, for his courage, but most of all for sharing the gift of his faith.

Brugnola presented his personal story and historical account of Pearl Harbor to eighth grade teacher Jessica Adams for use in the seventh and eighth grade curriculum.

Seventh grade teacher Don Marsolais received a plaque depicting the U.S.S. Shaw before and after the bombing, a remembrance of Brugnola’s visit to Holy Family School.

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