As we honor those who’ve served our country this Veterans Day, Arizona PBS follows an American hero’s quest to rest in peace aboard one of America’s greatest ships.
“Journey Home to the USS Arizona” airs Nov. 12 at 9 p.m. Narrated by Matthew Broderick, the one-hour documentary follows the family of Raymond Haerry Sr. as they travel 5,000 miles from New Jersey to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, to place his ashes aboard the sunken battleship.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, then-19-year-old Ray Haerry Sr. was blown into the water and swam through oil and fire to Ford Island in the center of Pearl Harbor, where he found a rifle and opened fire on Japanese planes.
Later, Ray helped to recover the bodies of his fallen shipmates. One of the few remaining crew members from the USS Arizona who survived the Japanese attack during World War II, he passed away in 2016 at age 96. In April 2017, his ashes were interred in the USS Arizona, where he rejoined more than 1,000 of his shipmates who lost their lives on that fateful day.