Soldier's Home : Pearl Harbor Memories After 66 Years

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Pearl Harbor Memories After 66 Years

David Botti

A quick roundup of news articles commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. A primary theme of many of the pieces: the dwindling number of Pearl Harbor veterans still alive.

An editorial from the Cincinnati Post has a particularly poignant message:
Every December, on or around the 7th, I would write about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. My concern, even back then, was that we had begun to forget the significance of that day, not just to us, but to the entire world.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
[87-year-old Alex] Haynes' voice faltered as he recalled seeing what remained of the battleship Arizona where 1,177 sailors and Marines died in the heartbeat of a massive explosion. "Those men never knew what hit them," he said. "Maybe, in a way, it was a blessing."...That's why he never returned to Pearl Harbor after the war. "I never wanted to go back," Haynes said. "I always try to keep in my mind, pictures of the way it used to be before the attack."

From the LA Times:
The exact number of Pearl Harbor survivors, though unknown, is smaller, and they are older than the average WWII veteran. [Jack Ray] Hammett, a former Costa Mesa mayor, said he liked to think of his buddies as "walking, living history."

From the Baltimore Sun:
[The] national survivors group decided that last year's anniversary gathering at Pearl Harbor would be the last in Hawaii. The group would meet there every five years, but now it's just too hard for the survivors, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s, to travel so far.

The Associated Press takes a look at the civilian victims of the attack:
Children carried gas masks to the playground. Military officers commanded civilian courts under martial law. Residents feared enemy troops would parachute into the mountains and then swarm the beaches...This year's 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor offers reminders of how the assault upended the lives of Hawaii's civilians, in addition to the severe damage inflicted on the military.

Here's some good archival footage of the attack from Encyclopedia Britannica:

In the News, WWII, Navy

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