It's still Dec. 7 as I'm writing this post. Dec. 7 is the day, 68 years ago, that Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i was bombed by the Japanese, triggering America's entry into WWII.
Part of my job involves shooting news videos, and my assignment today was to go to a local remembrance service put on by a local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. According to their info, there are 18 members still alive. A half-dozen were there today. Not one of them was under 88 years old.
They raised a flag, then lowered it to half-staff (They were mostly Navy guys, so they were saying "half-mast"). After that, they went in from the cold and shared their stories from that day.
And with that, they became 20-year-olds watching bombs go off a few hundred feet away or getting strafed with aircraft gunfire. It's hard, even after 9/11, to imagine something like that on American soil.
I wonder how much attention we do pay to it. Even to the people who really should. A TV guy that came to cover the ceremony asked the vets if they could "wait a minute" before raising the flag. Problem is, the reason they raise the flag at 5 minutes before the hour is to correspond to it being 7:55 a.m. in Hawai'i, which is the time the attack began. Also, when the same person was asked if he wanted to interview a Bataan Death March survivor, he had no clue what the Bataan Death March was.
So, on my part, a hat tip to the Pearl Harbor survivors still, well, surviving. You have my respect.
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