Remember Pearl Harbor Day

It seems the anniversary garners less and less attention as the years go by. America has a habit of forgetting that there really are nations out there that want to kill us -- or, more often, ignoring the fact.

There still are some folks who won't ever forget, though, at least not while they're still drawing breath. On the 73rd anniversary of Japan's attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, more than a dozen survivors of the attack, including the last nine members of the USS Arizona Reunion Association, which consists of survivors of the battleship USS Arizona. The Arizona was destroyed by a catastrophic explosion caused by a direct bomb hit in the forward magazine. Nearly 1,200 crewmen died on the Arizona, 900 of whose remains are still aboard. It's amazing any of them got out:

The hull of the ship remains in Pearl Harbor, spanned by the Arizona Memorial. When I was in high school, we used to go fishing from the adjacent pier where the USS Maryland was docked. Now that pier is the home of the USS Missouri Museum and offers a good view of the Arizona Memorial:

Well, God bless those survivors who were able to make the trip, and I hope they are able to make many more. At a minimum, they deserve our thanks, and to preserve in the national memory the sacrifice they made and the larger message Pearl Harbor represents.