PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A handful of centennial survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor joined some 2,500 members of the public at the Japanese bombing site on Wednesday to commemorate those who perished 81 years ago.
The audience sat quietly during a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the same time the attack began on December 7, 1941.
Sailors aboard the USS Daniel Inouye stood along the rails of the guided-missile destroyer as it passed the grassy shoreline where the ceremony and USS Arizona Memorial were held to honor the survivors and those killed in the attack. Ken Stevens, a 100-year survivor of the USS Whitney, returned the salute.
“The eternal legacy of Pearl Harbor will be shared on this site forever, as we must never forget those who came before us so we can chart a more just and peaceful path for those who follow us,” said Tom Leatherman, superintendent of Pearl National Monument. Harbor.
About 2,400 servicemen died in the bombardment., which launched the United States into World War II. The USS Arizona alone lost 1,177 sailors and Marines, nearly half the death toll. Most of the fallen from the Arizona remained entombed on the ship, which lies on the harbor floor.
Ira Schab, 102, was on the USS Dobbin playing the tuba in the ship’s band. He remembers seeing Japanese planes flying overhead and wondering what to do.
“We had nowhere to go and we hoped they would miss us,” he said before the ceremony began.
He supplied ammunition to the gunners of the boat, which was not hit.
Now he has attended the remembrance ceremony four times.
“I wouldn’t miss it because I have a lot of friends who are still here and who are buried here. I return out of respect for them,” she said.
Schab remained in the Navy during the war. After the war, he studied aerospace engineering and worked on the Apollo program. He today he lives in Portland, Oregon.
He wants people to remember those who served that day.
Remember what they are here for. Remember and honor those who remain. They did a great job. The ones that are still here, dead or alive,” he said.
Only six survivors attended, fewer than the dozen or more who have traveled to Hawaii from across the country for the annual remembrance ceremony in recent years.
Part of the decline reflects the decline in the number of survivors as they age. The youngest active duty military personnel on December 7, 1941 would have been around 17 years old, making them 98 today. Many of those still alive are at least 100 years old.
Herb Elfring, 100, of Jackson, Michigan, said it was great that so many members of the public showed interest in the commemoration and attended the ceremony.
“Many people don’t even know where Pearl Harbor is or what happened that day,” he said.
Elfring was in the Army, assigned to the 251st Coast Artillery, part of the California National Guard. He remembers hearing bombs go off a few miles offshore at Pearl Harbor, but thought it was part of an exercise.
But then he saw a red ball on the fuselage of a Japanese Zero fighter jet as it strafed the ground next to it near his headquarters at Camp Malakole.
“That was a rude awakening,” he said. A soldier from his unit was wounded by bullets, but no one was killed, he said.
Robert John Lee remembers being a 20-year-old civilian living in his parents’ house on the naval base where his father ran the water pumping station. The house was just 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) across the harbor from where the USS Arizona was moored in the battleship row.
The first explosions before 8 am woke him up, making him think that a door was blowing shut in the wind. He got up to yell at someone to close the door only to look out the window at Japanese planes dropping torpedoes from the sky.
He saw the hull of the USS Arizona turn a deep orange-red after an aerial bomb hit it.
“Within a few seconds, that explosion went out with huge tongues of fire directly over the ship, but hundreds of feet up,” Lee said in an interview Monday after a boat tour of the harbor.
He still remembers the hiss of the fire.
The sailors jumped into the water to escape their burning ships and swam to the landing near Lee’s house. Many were covered in the thick, heavy oil that covered the port. Lee and his mother used Fels-Naptha soap to wash them. Sailors who were able to board small boats that transported them back to their vessels.
“Very heroic, I thought,” Lee said of them.
Lee joined the Hawaiian Land Guard the next day and later the US Navy. He worked for Pan American World Airways for 30 years after the war.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs does not have statistics on how many Pearl Harbor survivors are still living. But department data shows that of the 16 million who served in World War II, only about 240,000 were alive in August and about 230 die each day.
There were around 87,000 servicemen on Oahu at the time of the attack, according to a rough estimate compiled by military historian J. Michael Wenger.
