When torpedoes struck his battleship, Neil Frye was just 20 years old — a country boy halfway around the world from his tiny hometown of Vass ... s anti-aircraft guns and shot down a plane.

Sailors in a motor launch rescue a survivor from the water alongside the sunken USS West Virginia (BB-48) during or shortly after the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor. Note exten ...

Born in 1921 in Vass, Frye enlisted in the Navy on July 26, 1940. He was part of the Messman Branch, which was a racially segregated branch with Black, Asian and foreign national members ...