The attack brought the United States into World War 2, as millions of citizens, dubbed the Greatest Generation, took up arms to defend the country.
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The soon-to-be 90 year old had a special message for kids from one local school who were at the ceremony. “We were tied up about a half a mile from where the battleships were”, Kane said.
“To many Americans, Pearl Harbor was a sacred place for the survivors and their animosity, and a place to glorify the war dead”, said Nagaoka city official Yusuke Nishiyama, who has organized peace education and youth exchange programs with Honolulu for several years. “And we come here today to remember the sacrifice, it was a sacrifice, a tremendous sacrifice”, he said. I hate to think about how many are still with us, very possibly none of them. Nine additional vessels including three cruisers, and four destroyers, were also destroyed in the attack.
Ceremonies around the tri-state area commemorated the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Later, Mapou shattered a leg during the war when a kamikaze plane sunk his ship and cut it in half between Okinawa and Japan.
Palka spoke of his visit to the USS Arizona Memorial in 1968 on returning from his tour in Vietnam, calling it one of the saddest moments of his life. “He was from a small town in OH and he was to return to the mainland the following year to attend a Marine school and study mathematics”, she said.
Downing, a 103-year-old resident of Colorado Springs, Colorado, served on the USS West Virginia, which lost 106 men.
“The next day when I went to school which was December 8th”. The tactic let the giant battleship slide into mud below.
“I’m honouring them, not myself”, he said.
The Japanese military lost 55 men.
“We were sinking, and everything above the water line was on fire”, he said.
President Roosevelt changed his Pearl Harbor speech from “a day that will live on in world history” to “a day that will live in infamy”.
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But she knows her brothers died in the attack, and that her older sister was raped by Japanese soldiers shortly after the bombing (which happened December 8 in the Philippines, because the International Dateline is between Hawaii and the Philippines, but December 7 by USA time).
