‘I want to be with my ship’: Utahn killed in Pearl Harbor attack remembered

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – Eighty-two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, one Utahn remembered the moment in history that she says still impacts her today.

Annetta Mower, 88, of Salt Lake City, says she remembers Dec. 7, 1941, all too well.

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“I remember what a sad, gloomy time it was,” she said. “My parents told me and explained to me what happened. It was pretty hard.”

Annetta’s uncle, Mervyn Bennion, of Vernon, was the captain of the USS West Virginia in the Navy.

He was stationed at Pearl Harbor. On Sundays, he normally went to church, but Mower says he stayed back the day of the attack.

“He says, ‘I think I should get back with my ship,’” she said. “He didn’t say why, but he says, ‘I want to be with my ship.’”

That’s when the bombs landed. Shrapnel hit Bennion in the abdomen.

Mower says her uncle’s comrades tried to get him to safety, but he wanted to stay with the ship.

“Apparently he was able to do some commands before finally he passed away there on the deck of the ship,” she said.

Now, 82 years later, Mower remembers the man some might call a military hero. But she refers to him as Uncle Mervin.

“He was a lovely, lovely person,” she said.

Bennion is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

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