Veterans gather to remember lives lost in Pearl Harbor

“I’m just lucky to be a survivor, ya know, there’s so many of them that didn’t make it and I was one of the lucky ones” says U.S. Navy Veteran, Buck Morris. The United States declared war on Japan the next day. The group has a goal of putting wreaths on all 900,000 U.S. Military graves around the world including 33,000 in Utah.

Another survivor, who identified himself as Woody, shared his experience with a local media outlet. “I can only say thank you to all of you and this country”, the stranger told Lishman Marlena Raffety is now an American citizen, but she was a child living in Berlin during the war. “It was a bad day”. “You had no school for two months because we had to dig wartime bomb shelters”, Nicholson said.

Pearl Harbor survivors tossed a wreath over the USS Midway at exactly 7:55 Hawaii time, that’s when the attacks began.

“December 7th comes around once every year, a day I just dread”, he said.

For more than two decades, San Pedro Harbor was the home port for numerous ships attacked at Pearl Harbor, including the battleships California, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

Close to 100 people gathered in Oklahoma City near NW 13 Street and Broadway around an anchor from the USS Oklahoma to remember the “day which will live in infamy”, 74 years later.

Army veteran Dale Robinson, 93, remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor vividly.

“It’s us being able to honor those who have served, and the chance for us to get together with some of the civilian people that had family members that were in the branches of the service”, Jerry Burton of the Marine Corps League said.

That attack was, until the 2011 terrorist attacks in NY and Washington D.C., the deadliest scene ever on American soil, as bomber pilots took more than 2,400 American lives.

Iowa Pearl Harbor survivors were invited to the WWII Memorial on the state capitol grounds.

The attack on Pearl Harbor lasted 90 minutes. That’s why they fear being forgotten, as the years continue to slip away. World War II is a time he will never forget. They expect about 6,000 to show up for next year’s 75th anniversary.