Seven years ago, former USS Arizona crewman Charles William “;Bill”; Guerin learned that upon his death, his remains could be entombed with his fallen shipmates on the sunken battleship.

“;He thought about it and we talked about it for a long time,”; said his wife of 63 years, Margaret Guerin. “;He never forgot all those men who went down with the ship. He said, 'I would like to be down with them.' That was why he chose to be buried there.”;

This afternoon, following the ceremonies marking the 67th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack, Bill Guerin's remains will be placed in the well of gun turret 4, which was his battle station.

The Arizona lost 1,177 crew members during the Japanese attack. The remains of more than 1,000 are entombed there.

Of the 334 who survived the attack, Guerin and 31 of his shipmates chose to be buried there. Only veterans who were assigned to the USS Arizona at the time of the attack qualify for burial there.

Guerin, a resident of Bellevue, Neb., was 85 when he died on Dec. 22, 2007, in Omaha, Neb.

Today, his wife, Margaret, son Michael, daughter Diane, granddaughter Janice Rose, nieces Debra Stevenson and Terry Lou Brown, and nephews Terry Stevenson and Rick Hodgen will watch while National Park Service divers take Guerin's urn and place it in gun turret 4.

At 18, Guerin enlisted while still in high school in Idaho because jobs were scare then.

In March 1941 he was assigned to the Arizona as a gunner's mate while the battleship was being overhauled at the Bremerton Navy Yard near Seattle.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Guerin was finishing his breakfast when the bombs started falling.

En route to his battle station below turret 4, he felt two large explosions that made the entire ship shudder, his wife said. When water started to rise in his compartment, Guerin and the other sailors realized they had to leave.

Guerin, according to his biography, realized what had occurred after he crawled out of the turret to Arizona's main deck.

“;It was a total shock,”; Guerin said in his biography. “;I don't believe I was very scared ... but it did stop you in disbelief. Let's put it that way 'cause it is a shock when you're 19 years old and you're faced with an unknown you don't know nothing about. No one is trained for that kind of situation. You know you have drills, but you're really not prepared for anything like this.”;

Margaret said her husband and other Arizona sailors dove into the burning water surrounding the battleship and swam to Ford Island.

Guerin was later assigned to the destroyer USS MacDonough, which participated in operations at Wake Island, Truk, Bougainvillea, Salamanua, Lae, Guadalcanal, Savo Island, New Guinea, the Aleutian Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands and Guam. Guerin transferred to the Air Force in 1947 and was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, participating in the Berlin Airlift before retiring as a master sergeant in 1962.

With his wife, he managed apartment complexes and trailer parks in California and Idaho after leaving the Air Force.

Guerin's family will be among more than 2,000 people expected to attend the National Park Service and the Navy's joint memorial ceremony this morning at Pearl Harbor's Kilo Pier.