A Great Generation's Sacrifices at Pearl Harbor Must Be Remembered

Their ranks get thinner with every year passing since the dawn of a bright Sunday morning on Dec. 7, 1941, on Hawaii's island of Oahu.

And when thousands died at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, and the world changed forever for millions more, the survivors were of a different generation than today.

Americans have the experience of knowing them as fathers and grandfathers, co-workers and friends, but they grew up in a time when men did not often talk about their war experiences. One of the war's young heroes, a distinguished former U.S. senator named Bob Dole, died Sunday at age 98. Because of his prominence, his war experiences in Italy came to wider notice, but many of this generation did not share them with others.

That stoicism and modesty—while women served and suffered, too, most were the men of the U.S. Navy and other services in the Pacific war—was also rooted in the horror of Pearl Harbor Day.

It is not easy to read today.

The battleships targeted by the airplanes of the Imperial Japanese Navy were filled with thousands of seamen and officers—far more than in today's warships. Many officers and men were just rousing for a peaceful Sunday for the peacetime Navy.

Then, hell descended on the harbor. Fire and flame overwhelmed men on the ships and debris from the explosions rained down on survivors. One recalled "piece of timber, pieces of the boat deck, canvas and even pieces of bodies. I remember lots of steel and bodies coming down."

"I saw a thigh and a leg; I saw fingers; I saw hands; I saw elbows and arms." That was from a seaman on the USS Arizona, a battleship where the dramatic explosion from the attack destroyed the giant vessel in an instant, claiming more than 1,000 lives.

Historian Ian W. Toll's three-volume account of the Pacific war began with the recollections of the men who suffered in the surprise attack. There were stories of gallantry and heroism aplenty, as warriors struggled to open sealed ammunition lockers and tried to fight back at the unexpected and highly skilled attack.

Many of the wounded were so badly burned that their shipmates were unable to help them. A Marine on the Arizona described their bodies as painted white from the flames, "zombies" holding out their arms away from their bodies because of the horrible pain.

Small boats faced almost unendurable heat from the flames but still pushed out again and again to try to get close enough to burning ships to save lives.

The Navy was not the only service to suffer badly. Nearby airfields were also targeted. Men struggled to save warplanes demolished in the surprise attack. A Hickam Field chaplain, preparing the altar for Sunday services, helped mount a machine gun on it to fire back at the Japanese attackers.

The horrors at the scene 80 years ago are belied by the peaceful harbor where the remains of the USS Arizona today rest. "If you didn't go through it, there are no words that can adequately describe it," one seaman recalled. "If you were there, no words are necessary."

But words are necessary for the generations today and in the future. Thousands of warriors from Pearl Harbor and Oahu have now recorded their experiences in oral history projects, including the extraordinary collection of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

The word heroes conjures different images but quite often the pain and suffering cannot be fully appreciated. This nation and world is required to remember the heroes of Pearl Harbor, and their pain.

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