Memorial Day and Pearl Harbor Survivors

It is sad to see time doing to our valiant vets of World War II what the Germans and Japanese couldn't do. At least a thousand die every day across the US. The holds true with those who were at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that fateful December 7, 1941.

Several were on on hand this past Monday. Sterling Cale used an axe to break into an arms room to get weapons to fight the Japanese. George Brown was on the USS Oklahoma and had to swim through the burning water to get to safety. Ray Emory manned a gun on the USS Honolulu and braved the bullets.

Every year, more than a million people go out to the USS Arizona Memorial. I was fortunate enough to get to go out to it back on a family trip in 2002. It is a feeling akin to the Vietnam Wall, to know the several hundred men entombed beneath your feet, to see the circular turret mounts, and what got me the most, the drops of oil that still come up from the vessel. This represents a real connection with that day. Then, to look several hundred yards away and see the huge USS Missouri. These two vessels represent where the war began and ended for the US.

Every year, on or as near to it as I could get (if it was on a weekend), we spent the day with my seventh graders remembering Pearl Harbor and listening to the "Day of Infamy" speech. "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a day that shall live in infamy..."

Ray Emory, a native of Peoria, Illinois who has since retired to Hawaii, has spent the last 15 years of his life on the quest to identify the remains of hundreds of Pearl Harbor victims who were buried as "unknown" in the chaotic days after the attack.

On the 50th anniversary of the event, Emory went to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific near Honolulu to put flags on the graves. He was horrified to find the large number of graves only marked "Unknown. Dec. 7, 1941.

He began collecting records from every ship at the battle and tracking down where their dead were buried. Because of his efforts, many of these gravestones have been updated as to which ship or base they were serving when they died.

Even more, he has succeeded in getting four bodies exhumed and identified and there might shortly be a fifth. "They deserve a name on their grave."

Ray Emory deserves a great thanks for his efforts as do all past and present members of our armed forces.

I used the Chicago Tribune article of May 29, 2007 to get some of this information. "Devoted to Their Memory" by Kirsten Scharnberg.