Pearl Harbor Anniversary: Veterans And Survivors Pay Respects At Attack Site 69 Years Later

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - Sixty-nine years after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, survivors of the attack are due to gather at the base to remember those killed. (Scroll down for current and historic photos of the site)

Some 100 survivors, the youngest of whom are in their late 80s, have traveled from around the country to attend Tuesday's ceremony.

The event is being held across the harbor from the USS Arizona, which sank in the attack and where the remains of nearly 1,000 sailors and Marines are still entombed.

The survivors will be welcomed by a new $56 million center for visitors and take a boat out to the memorial that sits on top of the battleship.

The new center has twice the exhibition space as the old one, offering a deeper understanding of the attack.

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American ships burn during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo.

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American ships burn during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) -- Sixty-nine years after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, survivors of the attack are due to gather at the base to remember those killed.

Some 100 survivors, the youngest of whom are in their late 80s, have traveled from around the country to attend Tuesday's ceremony.

The event is being held across the harbor from the USS Arizona, which sank in the attack and where the remains of nearly 1,000 sailors and Marines are still entombed.

The survivors will be welcomed by a new $56 million center for visitors and take a boat out to the memorial that sits on top of the battleship.

The new center has twice the exhibition space as the old one, offering a deeper understanding of the attack.

Comments

[Real Indy]

12:56 PM on 12/10/2010

Why did the United States have military bases in Hawaii and the Philippines again?

[terry63]

09:18 PM on 12/11/2010

WW1

[jrb35]

05:04 AM on 12/12/2010

Actually, we took the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish-American War. Guantanamo Bay too.

[MIKEinNYC]

10:02 PM on 12/09/2010

Even now, 69 years later, does anyone think that it would be a good idea for the Japanese to erect a "cultural center" including a Shinto shrine there?

[jrb35]

01:57 PM on 12/10/2010

If American citizens choose to build a house of worship or cultural center on PRIVATE PROPERTY then it's nobody's business and their exercising of their Constitutional rights would be in and of itself a good thing. We are not so weak a country that our freedoms are a threat to anyone.

[Pierre Gaspard]

05:36 AM on 12/09/2010

America is the most myopic and self-centered nation on earth. They only recognize the pain of their own wounds and never acknowledge the pain and devastation they have caused to others. Hundreds of thousands, nay millions, have been fried to a crisp by Uncle Sam in all his inglorious military misadventures, yet all we hear about is 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Millions of Vietnamese, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, hundreds of thousands of German civilians and P.O.W.s, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, tens of thousands in Latin America, not to mention the war against the Native Americans. On December 7th, 1941, 2,459 Americans, almost all soldiers, died at Pearl Harbor. As horrible as that attack was, it's child's play compared to the nuclear radiation, depleted uranium, and napalm death meted out to all those persons unlucky enough to get in the way of the American dream.

[Jacob Black]

11:51 AM on 12/09/2010

If you are unable to recognize that the U.S. has done both good and bad things, and there are some events that we should memorialize with honor and some we should memorialize to remind us of mistakes made, please don't assume other are similarly limited.

[jrb35]

02:41 PM on 12/09/2010

This coming from a Frenchman? Spare us.

BTW, we don't just talk about our own wounds. We talk about the Holocaust a lot too (and for good reason). Remember the Holocaust? After France surrendered to the Nazis so quickly and pathetically a great many French collaborators helped ship French Jews off to the gas chambers. And then there was the French occupation of Indochina (Vietnam) and their colonization of Africa and their brutal oppression of Algeria. How many innocents died there? Let's not forget about Napoleon...

[ProCynic]

11:14 AM on 12/08/2010

I remember looking in a history book and seeing my high school building off the wing of Doolittle's raiders. I went to school in Yokosuka in Japan in the 70's. My old HS was part of the Japanese navy base during the bombing.

[Debbie Shoemaker]

09:38 AM on 12/08/2010

Thank you to all of the brave men and women who fought for the United States, prayers to those who did not make it.
Just a side note...I hope everyone driving a Japanese or Korean or German car are feeling real good about themselves today. Personally, I can't wait to buy a Bin Laden sedan or Taliban SUV. I just hope Iraq and Afghanistan get busy designing and producing cars so I can slap an American flag and ribbon sticker on it.

[Nancisdad]

01:28 PM on 12/08/2010

I drive a Mitsubishi Galant...built in that all American town of Normal, IL. Whatever profits go to an evil foreign corp, but wages are local.

Does that help?

[Debbie Shoemaker]

04:38 PM on 12/08/2010

Help what? If you want to drive a car that is designed by and ultimately benefits a foreign country, it's fine by me, it's all the rage in the U.S. these days. Tell yourself whatever you need to in order to justify your actions.

[SwimUpstream]

05:55 PM on 12/08/2010

Your car is bolted together in the US from subassemblies made in Japan.

Nice try however

[Supersteel]

09:06 AM on 12/08/2010

My grandmother's young cousin was killed in the attack. it still makes her tear up to this day all these years later. Back then, to most of the people who hadn't even heard of Pearl Harbor,the attack really seemed to come out of nowhere.

[oldmole1861]

08:49 AM on 12/08/2010

Do you have any awareness of how the U.S. treated Japan for the ninety years prior to Pearl, the racism, the insults, rejections, and humiliations? Did the Japanese, do you suppose, have grounds for alarm about the U.S. boasted goal of turning the ocean where their home was located into "an American lake"? This is yet another instance of the vicious arrogance of American foreign policy coming back to bite us - and we react each time with stunned surprise - why ever do they hate us so, don't they know how honorable we are?

[Supersteel]

09:04 AM on 12/08/2010

Ah the blame the victim crowd is back.

[cgeorgan]

09:20 AM on 12/08/2010

Yes.

Furthermore, I would assume such a learned individual such as yourself would recognize Japan's treatment of the Eastern hemisphere during those same years.

[robgax]

07:36 AM on 12/08/2010

This is cool. A recreation of the Japanese attack in Asia. ttps://twitter.com/#!/ww2asia

[doodlebug2]

07:28 AM on 12/08/2010

thanks vets

[CollectiveId]

07:09 AM on 12/08/2010

Japan was invading other countries for oil/resources. US sees it could be a big power so decides to blockade Japan. (act of war in it self)

Japan decides to attack countries that it sees as threat to its energy/resource needs. USA.

And at present USA is now invading to countries. Using the same strategy Japan did.

We are what we despise.

[Steamboater]

08:30 AM on 12/08/2010

Don't you even have a clue about what Japan did when it invaded China for example? I'm not going to tell you but obviosuly need to do your homework.

[OliverTwist]

08:42 AM on 12/08/2010

You are both right.

My understanding is:

Japan had no energy resources.

It's power depended on fueling it's fleet.

It was determined to be an international power.

Japan invaded China for coal. They were abusive because they were totalitarian and racist.

The US told Japan to get out of China and embargoed Japan's oil.

Japan reached out to control Burma oil - and decided war was the only way.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[ProCynic]

11:06 AM on 12/08/2010

Let's not forget the Korean "comfort women". I lived in Japan for 6 years (school and business). A man I met was Korean. He had an alien registration card. He was born in Japan, his father was Japanese. His mother was Korean. She was brought to Japan during the war as a "comfort woman". This man's father was a middle ranking Japanes Army officer. He is still considered an alien in the only country he has known as home. Even though the classes have been outlawed since the end of the war, he is on one of the bottom most rungs of the ladder.

[jrb35]

02:49 PM on 12/09/2010

Get your facts straight. The US did not blockade Japan. We cut off trade with them in certain vital materials. Big difference.

[rougebaisers]

06:07 AM on 12/08/2010

wow
easy to understand the madness and absolute need to mobilize seeing these

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/pearl_harbor_69_years_ago_toda.html

[Boobuzuela]

11:34 AM on 12/08/2010

That's the best collection of Pearl Harbor photo's I've ever seen. Really gives you a taste of the devastation and despair. The one guy standing on the burned out destroyer, looking towards heaven...poignant.

[Adam616]

05:40 AM on 12/08/2010

That was a time when Americans (and Canadians) had a vested interest in what was happening. Now we just wonder if events in Af/Pak-Yemen-Iraq will make it costlier to fill up those SUVs on which we so "proudly" display the flags and yellow ribbons.

[Steamboater]

09:00 AM on 12/08/2010

Sure, it non-sensical to make great comparisons to what happened to bring about Pearl Harbour and what's happend to bring about the war with Iraq and in central asia even if  you can make a case for some very slight similarities,but the dissimilarites are more apparent. In fact, Japan attacked us much ealrier then Pearl Harbor with an attack on one of our gunboats in China in the mid 30's and it was known as the Panay Incident.  Japan apologized but they knew what they were doing and the attack was purposeful. The bottom line was Germany was headed by a madman who would have eventually, if he could have, set his navy and airforce on us and Japan would have cut us off, instead of us them, of valuable needed supplies such as some metals and rubber etc, and those supplies were very important.  That aside the moral euqivalent was much different then with Japan really commiting what was genocide with the infusion of opium, as the Brits did in the 19th century, to China so as to keep as many chinese from even thinking of fighting back. Their massacre at Nanking was an abominable atrocity where babies even were thrown up into the air and caught on the tips of Japanese bayonets and that was no propaganda but the truth, all in ithe name of co-prosperity but more in the name of prosperity for Japan and an emperor who they believd was a living god.  WWII was the right war to fight.

[pbnyc59]

03:58 AM on 12/08/2010

God bless to all who served, and continue today.

[Aardvaark]

02:22 AM on 12/08/2010

I happened to be on a boat, about a mile out of Honolulu, headed for Kauai early one Sunday morning in 1986, when, all of a sudden, a flight of F-4s came screaming LOUDLY over the water nearly overhead at about 50 feet, headed for Pearl in the missing man formation.

I realized that it was December 7th, coincidentally Sunday, and it was a part of the annual memorial service. The goose bumps started and I thought about all the men who gave their lives that day and in the rest of the war. Sunday mornings were more peaceful even then than the rest of the week.

The shock and disbelief of the people stationed in Hawaii must have been incredible.

[blastocyst]

06:03 AM on 12/08/2010

The F-4 was/is not a quiet aircraft to begin with. They've a distinctive sound even cruising 'quietly'. Thanks for your recollection and observation.

[maritimer]

02:31 AM on 12/08/2010

They weren't stupid...your comment on the other hand, is.

[spytheweb]

03:24 AM on 12/08/2010

The US government knew the attack was coming and let it happen (same as 9-11) so they could enter the war with the people's support. This is not a new ploy, many governments have used this.

"Japan's Need for Oil

Japan's desire for economic independence and the establishment of a commanding presence in East Asia required access to resources, particularly oil for the military machine. On July 24, 1941, the quest to conquer these resources prompted Japanese forces to enter southern Indochina.

With this incursion, Japanese military leaders knew they were courting war with the United States. Indeed, President Franklin Roosevelt reacted harshly, freezing Japanese assets and placing oil exports to Japan under restrictive licensing. This virtual embargo would be lifted only if the Japanese withdrew from China and Indochina and ended their pact with the Axis powers.

From the Japanese perspective, the situation was untenable. At least 65 percent of Japan's petroleum products came from American firms. The embargo would paralyze the country economically and leave the military with only 18 months of oil from reserve oil stocks. Without oil, the navy could not operate and Japan would become militarily impotent. Acquiescence to Roosevelt's conditions would not only entail an unacceptable loss of face, it would force an end to Japan's quest for regional dominance."

http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/japan-bombs-pearl-harbor2.htm