Thursday, December 07, 2006

ntl remembers pearl harbor



Today, NTL honors the men and women that died in the attack on Pearl Harbor 65 years ago today. The surprise attack by the Japanese spurred President Roosevelt to enter U.S. troops into WWII.

Yahoo! News has an excellent story on today's memorial service.

Nearly 500 survivors bowed their heads at 7:55 a.m., the minute planes began bombing the harbor in a surprise attack that thrust the United States into World War II.

"America in an instant became the land of the indivisible," said former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, the author of "The Greatest Generation," who spoke at the shoreside ceremonies. "There are so many lessons from that time for our time, none greater than the idea of one nation greater than the sum of its parts."

The veterans, most in Hawaiian aloha shirts, were honored with prolonged applause at the solemn ceremony near where some of the ships remain rusting and moss-covered under the harbor's waters.

Many were treating the gathering as their last, uncertain if they would be alive or healthy enough to travel to Hawaii for the next big memorial ceremony, the 70th anniversary.

"It is because of you and people like you that we have the freedoms we enjoy today," Capt. Taylor Skardon said after relating each ship's story at the end of the ceremony.

Please join us in honoring our WWII veterans and those that made their final sacrifice on Dec. 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

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