Across the years, an unbroken connection

This picture is of photos hanging in my kitchen. They are my husband's father (top middle) and uncles. All of them served in WWII. The Marine in the bottom of the photo is uncle John, killed in Saipan. My husband served in Phu Bai Vietnam entering into military service because of his family and the fact that he figured as soon as he was done with high school, he'd end up there anyway. Both of us are second generation Americans. My Dad served in Korea but my uncles served during WWII.

The following is something sent to me and is very moving, especially today. My Dad, uncles and my husband's family are all gone now but we are reminded of them everyday.

Across the years, an unbroken connection: The Navy of Pearl Harbor was a proud, professional force
Published: Wednesday, December 07, 2011
By Guest Columnist

By Eric Schuck

Seventy years on, she still bleeds. In sun and in rain, in wind and in calm, she slowly weeps away a drop of black oil for each of the souls lost on that now distant Sunday. The drops rise slowly, countless small spheres ascending through crystalline waters only to break in an iridescent sheen on the harbor, mirroring the colors of the rainbows that glow so often in the Hawaiian sky. But there can be no mistaking this for a place of beauty: Each drop reeks of sulfur. Each drop carries the unmistakable smell of death.

Here lies the USS Arizona, late of the U.S. Navy. Her grave rests in shallow water on the eastern side of Ford Island, her shattered, burned and broken hull forever holding more than 1,100 sailors and Marines for whom the world ended shortly after 8 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941. I have seen her a dozen times, and each time I mourn the same as the first.

Despite the remoteness of seven decades, Pearl Harbor is, for me, an intimately personal place. On the day of the attack, my grandfather had been in the Navy for nearly nine years. He was part of the "old Navy," the $21-a-month professionals who stood watch through the Depression and who still formed the bulk of the Navy on Dec. 7. His ship was not in port that day, instead desperately attempting to deliver a deckload of Marine scout planes to Midway. It was only through the fickle but most providential favor of Neptune and Mars that his ship was at sea.

His time would come. Six months and a day later, he would find himself on the bright, burning deck of a dying carrier in the Coral Sea. Battered and beleaguered, he would survive, earn an officer's commission and retire from the Navy 14 years later, going on to a magnificent second act as a gentleman farmer and grandfather. But he never forgot the tragedy of that December day. For while to most of us the dead of Pearl Harbor are nothing more than marble-carved names or sepia-tinged photos, for him they were living, breathing men, eternally young in his memories. They were always with him.

That sense of loss cannot be understated. The Navy was much smaller then, a much more intimate fraternity than it would be in 1945. As historian S.E. Morison notes, through most of the 1930s the Navy typically numbered around 10,000 officers and 100,000 men. The losses at Pearl Harbor fell disproportionately among these long-service brethren, and it was these men who bore the brunt of those first bitter months of the war.
read more here

Also from CNN

Nation pauses to remember Pearl Harbor
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 2:27 PM EST, Wed December 7, 2011

The commemoration at the Pearl Harbor visitor center included a rifle salute and wreath presentations.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: "We stop and stand fast in memory of our heroes," Navy regional commander says
This year's commemoration marks 70 years since the attacks on Oahu
The attack pulled the United States into World War II
The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association is disbanding this month
(CNN) -- Survivors of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gathered Wednesday to remember the 2,400 people who lost their lives exactly 70 years ago.
"Just as every day and unlike any other day, we stop and stand fast in memory of our heroes of Pearl Harbor and the Second World War," Rear Adm. Frank Ponds, commander for Navy region Hawaii, told the gathering.
U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus took note of the devastating legacy of the two-hour attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago.
"The history of December 7, 1941, is indelibly imprinted on the memory of every American who was alive that day. But it bears repeating on every anniversary, so that every subsequent generation will know what happened here today and never forget," Mabus said.
read more here