“Where’s Pearl Harbor?”

Five nonagenarians and one centenarian sat on stage — with collectively nearly 600 years of life and memories — and each recalled aloud the moment when as a teenage boy or girl or newly married woman they first heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

“I can’t believe what’s happening,” Syliva Rifkin recalled thinking. And then: ​“Where’s Pearl Harbor?”

Of course, they would all find out soon enough. Instantly in fact.

Rifkin, Gert Lerman, Norman Feitelson, Vicki Smith, Izzy Judah, and Howard Laniado were the six speakers who summoned and presented their memories Wednesday on the 75th anniversary of the attack that plunged the United States into World War Two.

All residents of the downtown senior living complex Tower One/Tower East, they presented their capsule stories to 75 rapt fellow residents as part of a program to honor veterans. The event also included a presentation of songs of love and war sung by the Towers Chorus.

Lerman, now 100 years old, was married just six months at the time. She ​‚had just moved into her own apartment with her dentist husband. ​“The radio came on. The Japanese had bombed,” she recalled. Nobody knew where Pearl Harbor was. Everyone was instantly in shock. Then President Roosevelt came on the air, with his wonderful warm way [of speaking] and told us we’d be okay.”

Within eight months her husband was drafted. She followed him to several training locations around the country, giving birth to her children on the army bases.

Feitelson, now 92, said he was 17 and studying for a Latin test at Crosby High School in Waterbury where he was ​“a power Jewish forward” on the basketball team, nabbing all of four rebounds during the course of the season.

He too did not know where Pearl Harbor was. A year and a half later, on June 23, 1943, Feitelson entered the service in the infantry headed for the South Pacific. ​“I was being shipped out when Harry [Truman] dropped the bomb,” he recalled.

Vicki Smith, who’s 91 remembered: ​“I was 16. I’d just returned from a session of ice skating at the New Haven Arena. I had only a vague idea of where it [Pearl Harbor] was,” she said.

Of the six participants only Austrian-born Izzy Judah had had any experience of war. When news of Pearl Harbor came over the radio, ​“I was having breakfast with my family.,” he told the Tower One audience. ​“I said, ​‘Not again.’ I’d escaped a year in Nazi Germany.”

That escape, which involved jumping from a train, landed him in Switzerland for a year. He arrived in the U.S. on May 13, 1940. He was drafted into the infantry in 1942 and saw action on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, and the Philippines, where he was wounded and received a bronze star and a purple heart.

He was happy to be alive and appreciative of his adopted country. And proud oO his army service. ​“I was able to defend myself this time,” he added.

Laniado recalled the news of Pearl Harbor came to me while he was sitting in the stands watching a New York Giants football game. A voice came over the loudspeaker, interrupting the action to say: ​“All military personnel report to their bases.”

Laniado, then 18, enlisted in the Navy, where he served for nine years.

Feitelson went on to become a teacher and educational administrator in Waterbury, a Division One basketball referee and the director of Camp Laurelwood in North Madison. He said that while he knew news of Pearl Harbor would change his life, the most moving message he heard over the radio was of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, news which brought tears to his eyes.

Feitelson framed his remarks by saying that while 16 million Americans have served in the armed forces, only 625,000 are still alive today.

After the remarks, Tower Chorus conductor Kevin Mack led a medley of songs from the World War Two era beginning with one composed within days of the event, ​“Remember Pearl Harbor,” by Don Reid and Sammy Kaye,. The lyrics include:

Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we go to meet the foe
Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we did the Alamo.

And they did.