On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese bombs fell out of a clear blue sky onto the island of Oahu, Hawaii, changing forever the history of the United States.

Fast forward 75 years and five days shy of the anniversary to another island, Vashon, where Kjell Urban welcomed visitors to the Vashon Maury Island Heritage Museum. He talked about “Vashon and World War II: A Personal Collection,” an exhibit of World War II memorabilia he curated after collecting it from boxes and bins found at garage sales around the island.

Urban, 17, is a senior at Vashon High School and, for the past eight years, he’s pursued a passion for WWII artifacts with a steady focus and curiosity that began at the age of 9, when he accidentally discovered the uniforms of his great grandfather, Wilburn Lowe, who fought in the Pacific Ocean theater. Helping his father move furniture into the old Sherman house, an early homestead owned by his grandfather, Urban noticed the uniforms hanging in the corner and asked his father, Mike, about them.

“He said they were my great grandfather’s. After that I got interested in his uniforms and the medals, and from then on anytime I went to a garage sale, I would see WWII stuff,” Urban said. “I started picking it, and (the collection) started from there. I’d go every Saturday in the summer to garage sales, and you just find the stuff anywhere — a gas or ammo can in the garage, and in the house there is one little pin.”

From one little pin, Urban now has over 600 in his collection, with 300 currently on display, including numerous purple hearts still labeled with the hero’s name. They are artfully arranged in a glass case along with medals, letters, knives and other, smaller artifacts.

Filling the back section of the museum, Urban’s exhibit is divided into four sections — the Pacific theater, the naval war, the European theater and the homefront. With more than half of his collection still lining the walls and shelves in his bedroom, Urban could not bring everything.

“I grabbed what I thought was the most interesting in terms of the war (and in the best condition.) I have other foot lockers that aren’t as cool as these,” Urban said pointing to a well-preserved locker.

A stretcher leans up against the wall, something Urban rescued from a dank barn. There are field glasses used in the European trenches, a 100-pound bomb, a radio with a telescoping antenna, an anti-aircraft sight, a framed paper from Adolf Hitler’s desk and a Nazi emblem found stuck between the pages of a book on WWII, even a skull fragment from the Pacific theater.

While 90 percent of the artifacts are treasures Urban has discovered on Vashon, 10 percent come from California via a friend who looks for items in garage sales in the Golden State.

Many of the things Urban buys are sold because a family no longer can store them or has lost interest. His challenge is to identify the original owner, which often is an impossible task. He occasionally finds a collection of pins or medals, but rarely finds a name attached to them as they’ve been passed down through the family “so the name is lost and no one cares about it anymore.” Another challenge Urban sometimes faces comes from identifying the object itself.

“Most of the time I can tell by the look of it or it has a 1944, 45 or 41 date on it,” Urban said. “But sometimes I can’t tell if it is WWII or from the Korean War. In that case, I pick it up anyway and look up the serial number later. For uniforms, you can tell by the airborne patch or medals.”

Between Google and his extensive array of WWII books, Urban spends a lot of time researching, which means he is always learning something new about the war. He particularly enjoys talking to veterans when he has the good luck to meet them.

“Sometimes I have researched something meticulously, and I’ll find a veteran who will tell me something else,” Urban said. “It is a constant learning experience.”

It also can be a lot of fun. Recalling a time when, at the last minute, he and his father decided to go to a garage sale, Urban said he found a wooden box with an air telescope and all kinds of airplane dials in it. The owner of the box was an aircraft engineer from the war, so it was all “pretty exciting,” he said.

Urban’s mother, Catherine, delights in her son’s pursuit, for both the personal and more universal reasons.

“I’ve always thought it was great that he was interested in his family’s past and how that blossomed into interest in WWII,” she said. “It is fun to see him talk about it and now share (his collection). Many families have been very thankful that there was someone they could give their artifacts to because some people aren’t able to keep everything.”

Island historian Bruce Haulman also is impressed with both Urban and his collection. He contacted Urban about curating a show after a Heritage Museum board member saw Urban’s collection at his house. Haulman, Urban and a museum committee met over several months about the exhibit, eventually deciding to present Urban’s collection as a way to tell the story of how the war impacted Vashon Island. A statement at the museum says, “The exhibit will tell the story of Vashon resident’s participation in each major theater of war, the home front, and of the Vashon Japanese residents during the war in the internment camps and in the military.”

For Urban, not only does he intend to keep what he discovers, but hopes to one day open up his own WWII museum. The objects he’s collected tell the story of the war, usually a personal story, like the jackets of his great grandfather.

“I think about what the object had to do to get here,” he said looking at a helmet mottled with slight dents. “It’s all the different things — first the war, then all the different families having passed it down, and then the scariest thing is to think about looking at the combat knives or the rifles and thinking about who was on the wrong end of that.”

I think that’s pretty interesting. I guess it was everything — all of it— that drew me in.”