Pearl Harbor survivors - and people directly linked to them - increasingly scarce

As Japanese bombs and torpedoes exploded against the ships in "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor, Charlie May fired a machine gun as a fellow crewman wrapped himself in a flag and clutched a Bible to his chest.

John Blozis stripped to his underpants and jumped overboard as his burning ship sank.

Tom Mudore gave some of his clothes to other naked, oil-covered survivors whose skin had been burned off.

As America remembers the 75th anniversary of the attack today, many survivors - and even direct links to them - are no longer with us.

Here are some of their stories:

<h3 class="leadin">John Blozis, St. Charles, Elgin:

Blozis, who had lived in St. Charles before joining the Navy, recalled in a 1978 interview how he felt frustrated and angry as dull thuds under his feet showed that torpedoes were pounding into the battleship USS West Virginia.

When he heard the order to abandon ship, he stripped down to his underpants and swam to a nearby island, then took shelter in a crowded, freezing-cold cave.

Blozis later volunteered to serve on PT boats and helped rescue famous pilot Eddie Rickenbacker, who had been lost at sea after a plane crash. Blozis died in Elgin in 1993 at the age of 77.

<h3 class="leadin">Dick Jacobs, Elgin:

Richard F. "Dick" Jacobs died aboard the battleship USS California. His last link - brother Byron "Frank" Jacobs, a watch repairman and World War II Army Air Corps veteran - died Oct. 6, one month shy of his 99th birthday, outliving his brother by 78 years.

When hearing of the Japanese attack, Frank recalled in a 2011 interview, he was aboard a train bound for two weeks' pre-Christmas leave in Elgin.

News of the individual sailors' fate was slow in coming. The family worried. Finally, eight days after the attack, the Jacobs family rejoiced to receive a Christmas card from Dick. But the card had been mailed before Dec. 7. The very next day, a telegram announced that Dick had been killed.

After the war, a shipmate from the California visited the family. The man said the crew had held a party on shore the night before. Dick's singing group, the Tip Top Trio, won a trophy.

Ten hours later the shipmate saw Dick head below decks to close watertight doors. Just then a torpedo from a Japanese plane blew a hole in the battleship's side, right where Dick would have been standing. His body was recovered months later when the battleship was refloated.

There was one other Elgin fatality in the Pearl Harbor attack: Seaman Bruce Bradley, who had dropped out of Elgin High School to join the Navy at age 19. He was assigned to the USS Arizona, where 1,177 of the 1,400 men on board were killed.

<h3 class="leadin">

Charlie May, Bartlett:

May died in January at age 92. Death almost came much, much sooner, as he served on the cruiser USS Phoenix - but almost was caught on the infamous Arizona.

He recalled in an earlier interview that he and others were headed to the Arizona for a Sunday church service. "If our launch hadn't been running 15 minutes late," he said, "we would have been on the Arizona when it blew up."

<h3 class="leadin">Tom Mudore, South Elgin:

Mudore, a submarine crewman, had just finished breakfast in a mess hall on land when he saw the Japanese planes.

After the blitz, survivors from the five sinking battleships swam into the submarine base. Like Blozis, many were semi-naked and covered with oil. Some were horribly burned, Mudore recalled in an interview before his death.

So he and his buddies gave them their own clothes.

Mudore died in 1998 during heart surgery at age 78.

A year later, his daughter spread those ashes on the water at Pearl Harbor.