Chaos reigned 65 years ago today aboard the USS Arizona as Japanese dive bombers swirled overhead, smoky fires raged on nearby ships, and the turquoise waters of Pearl Harbor grew slick with oil.

The ship's captain was Franklin Van Valkenburgh, a Milwaukeean who had assumed command 10 months earlier of the battleship, one of eight at anchor in the Pacific Fleet's homeport. Van Valkenburgh was the son and grandson of prominent Milwaukee lawyers and a graduate of Cass Street School and East Side (now Riverside) High School.

When the ship's air raid siren went off at 7:55 a.m., Van Valkenburgh ran to the one place where a ship's captain should be during an attack - the bridge. He died within minutes, along with 1,177 others aboard.

At 8:06 a.m. a bomb struck a fatal blow between the Arizona's first and second gun turrets. The ship would burn for two days and become the tragically iconic image of the day of infamy.

Van Valkenburgh was on the phone directing his men when he was wounded in the abdomen by shrapnel. When the explosion ripped open the ship, Van Valkenburgh refused to be carried to safety and ordered sailors who tried to move him to save themselves, according to newspaper accounts. He received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Only Van Valkenburgh's Naval Academy ring was found.

During ceremonies honoring the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, his son described receiving the ring after a cleanup crew recovered it from the bridge of the Arizona.

"I lost the finest shipmate any man could have had on that day of infamy, and it left a void in the life of a 22-year-old kid," said Van Valkenburgh's son and namesake.

Lonnie Cook recalled Van Valkenburgh as a captain who literally ran a tight ship but was well-liked by his sailors.

"I remember him with his white gloves on during inspection looking for dust," Cook, 86, said Wednesday from Honolulu, where he was taking part in 65th anniversary activities. Cook was assigned to the Arizona in June 1940, his first ship after boot camp. He was changing clothes that day in front of his locker when he heard the rumble of Japanese bombs. Minutes later he made his way unhurt onto the quarterdeck and helped with the wounded.

"The friends I lifted off were burnt so bad," said Cook. "They called out my name, and I couldn't recognize them."

Leland Bryson, 85, was sent to the operations tower at the airstrip on Ford Island when the bombing started. From there he saw the Arizona explode.

"I can remember when it blew up it lifted out of the water. After it got hit, it smoked for a couple of days," said Bryson, who lives in Milwaukee and worked at the downtown post office for 21 years.

Arthur Herriford, 84, was on the light cruiser Detroit when he glanced at the Arizona from his battle station.

"I was looking right at her when she blew up, it was a god-awful thing. I was up in the forward superstructure about 65 feet above the water line. I had nothing to do but watch things blow up," said Herriford, 1st District Director of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

Herriford doesn't recall hearing an explosion, but about five seconds later he felt a gust of wind. It was the Arizona's death gasp.

The battleship became a tomb for most of its crew. Their remains are still in the ship, which continues to leak oil.

Van Valkenburgh's name is among those etched on the wall of the white Arizona memorial that straddles the sunken ship. A destroyer that later saw action off Iwo Jima and during the Korean War was named after him. Few Milwaukeeans, though, know the Arizona's captain grew up here.

At Cass Street School, Van Valkenburgh is not listed among cards printed with students' names, though it's likely a card file wasn't kept when he attended, said Principal Tim Kavanagh. The oldest card is of a student born in 1903; Van Valkenburgh was born in 1888.

Kavanagh said eighth-graders are studying the Pearl Harbor raid this week.

"I'll definitely mention it to them. Sixty-five years - it's just such a distant time for the students now. So anything to help bring it home will be great, that the actual captain of the Arizona sat in the rooms where they're sitting now," he said.