Augusta warrior project to honor war veterans on pearl harbor anniversary

The attack, which killed 2,402 Americans, injured another 1,282, and destroyed 188 USA aircraft and six ships, led directly to the American entry into World War II, with war being declared on Japan the following day.

President Barack Obama marked the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Wednesday by honoring those who gave their lives that day.

Today, the mayor of the Nagaoka, Japan, where the admiral who led the attack was from, will join his counterpart in Honolulu as friends. Only a handful of veterans caught in that bloody beginning of World War II for the United States still survive. In fact, more than 2,400 Americans were killed and more than 1,000 wounded. Fewer than 200 survivors of the attacks there and on other military bases in Hawaii are alive.

In the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, 353 Imperial Japanese dive bombers, fighter planes and torpedo planes shattered the silence of what started as a typical day in a place regarded by many as Paradise in the Pacific.

On that horrific day, 2,345 Americans were killed, much of the Pacific Fleet was crippled and almost all of the USA airpower in the region was destroyed.

Arsenault is one of 30 Pearl Harbor veterans nationwide who will attend the solemn ceremony courtesy of the Greatest Generation Foundation. Before World War II had ended, Warren would participate in 140 engagements with the Japanese throughout the Pacific Theater.

In an interview with The Item in 1991, Arsenault said he was stationed in Fort Weaver, a half-mile from the mouth of Pearl Harbor, when the attack came. The USS Arizona Memorial, which straddles the hull of the sunken battleship, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the USS Arizona and commemorates the events of that day. Obama visited Hiroshima with Abe in May, becoming the first sitting American president to visit the city since President Harry S. Truman ordered two atomic bombs to be dropped on the country in 1945 to force Japan’s surrender.

The United States entered World War II the next day and President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered one of the most important speeches in USA history.

“If I can walk, I’ll go”, said Chavez, who lives in San Diego.

World War II fatality statistics vary, with estimates of total deaths ranging from 50 million to more than 80 million.The higher figure of more than 80 million people includes deaths from war-related disease and starvation.

“We got off the ship by rope, hand over hand, off the vessel” said Lauren Bruner.

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”.

“That submarine was on the surface and our skipper didn’t know if it was ours or not”, Lehner, 20 at the time, said at the Los Angeles event. The ceremony will also be transmitted on the Internet.

Abe’s refusal to apologize showed that his visit is just “a hypocritical gesture” to cater to the US, Zhang said.