HONOLULU - Sixty-nine years after Pearl Harbor's darkest day, some powerful and famous people squinted in the tropical sunshine that bathed Tuesday's somber observance at the new visitor center.
Actor Jim Nabors led the crowd of about 3,000 in a booming rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Sharp military salutes and spirited civilian applause acknowledged the presence and comments of Admiral Patrick Walsh, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet; keynote speaker Thomas Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and new Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a former 20-year congressman who took his oath of office just the day before.
But the brightest stars at the combined visitor center dedication and 69th anniversary memorial were the estimated 250 grayed Pearl Harbor vets who leapt to action here on Dec. 7, 1941, and who now walk, most of them, with difficulty.
The ceremony was held just across the harbor from Ford Island and the sunken hulk of the battleship USS Arizona.
"Oh, I'm sure glad I came," beamed Lakeport resident Wilbur "Bill" Slater after a full morning of being saluted, thanked, asked for his autograph and interviewed by high school kids. "This is a wonderful, wonderful day. It's sort of heartwarming to think you're appreciated for what you did."
Slater, a retired truck driver, at 86 was one of the younger Pearl survivors present. He said that although he appreciated the acknowledgement, he has never felt that he did anything exceptional the morning Imperial Japan attacked U.S. forces on Oahu and prompted America to enter World War II. He was all of 17 and had been aboard the battleship Pennsylvania only a few months when the attack came.
"I was so frightened," he recalled.
He was a kid who weighed maybe 135 pounds and was assigned to help retrieve ammunition that was stored below decks. The brief, catastrophic battle that Sunday in 1941 was fully underway when a mechanical lift malfunctioned and Slater had to go below deck to retrieve ammo. A bomb struck the area of the Pennsylvania deck where he'd been standing shortly before. That instant, 24 of his fellow sailors perished.
"That bomb would have hit me in the head if I'd been there," said Slater, who came to Oahu with Lake County friend and fellow Pearl survivor Walt Urmann of Clearlake and two of Sonoma County's Pearl Harbor vets. Since 1941, Slater has been back only one other time, decades ago. He said that being there Tuesday left him feeling gratitude for his good, long life and sorrow for the young men whose lives were cut short at Pearl and in the world war that followed.
"I consider myself lucky," he said.
Many those present for the ceremony Tuesday on a warm (80 degrees) and calm day on the south shore of Oahu thanked the veterans in person for what they witnessed and sacrificed on the day that forged their brotherhood.
"It was a day when weaker souls would have surrendered," veteran U.S. Senator and highly decorated World War II veteran Daniel Inouye told the assembly in a letter. He apologized for having to miss the occasion because of year-end budget challenges in Washington, D.C.
During Secretary Strickland's keynote address, delivered on a lawn on the new $56 million Pearl Harbor Visitor Center, he spoke directly to the Pearl vets.
"I and all of us want to assure you," Strickland said, "that your stories...will be passed forwared generation after generation. They will outlive us all."
"We will make sure that we will always remember Pearl Harbor," he said.
Petaluma's Herb Louden, 93, nodded humbly as Admiral Walsh thanked him and his buddies in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association for teaching the nation that "if ever there was a nation worth fighting for," this is it.
"On behalf of a very grateful Navy," said the commander of the Pacific Fleet, "we thank you."
Louden serves as national chaplain of the association, and after the ceremony he and his wife, Evelyn, were given seats on a launch and taken the short distance to the Arizona Memorial for the first ecumenical prayer ceremony at a Pearl Harbor celebration.
A U.S. Park Service honor guard stood at attention as Louden and representatives of the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish and other world faiths offered prayers for peace.
Daniel Martinez, chief historian of the U.S. Parks Service and an authority on Pearl Harbor, presided over the prayer service, which happened below the wall on the Arizona Memorial that bears the names of the more than 1,100 sailors who died aboard the ravaged battleship, including Santa Rosa's Billy Montgomery.
Reminders abounded at Pearl on Tuesday of the new threat to American security that has roiled the nation since skyjacked airliners struck domestic targets in 2001 - a 21st Century Pearl Harbor.
No bags or purses were allowed into the visitor center and Tuesday's festivities were interrupted for a time following the reported discovery of a suspicious package. The Pearl vets, all aged within a few years of 90, took it all in stride.
Santa Rosa's Jesse Love didn't mingle much at the ceremony. Love, who's 88 and the last living founding member of the North Bay's Chapter 23 of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, said that when he reunites with fellow Pearl survivors he prefers to listen.
"I don't do too much talking, but I like to be among them," he said.
The survivors' convention normally would have happened in 2011, the 70th anniversary of the surprise attack. But the vets decided to move it up a year to coincide with the dedication of the visitors' center. The gathering that ends today will likely be the last time that most of the vets will return with their buddies to Pearl Harbor.
At a business meeting on Monday, after considerable debate and some rancor, a majority of the approximately 90 Pearl survivors present voted to hold another national convention in 2012, in Federicksburg, Tex.
The group has traditionally held conventions every two years, so the soonest it could return to Hawaii would be 2014.
This was the first reunion for Lakeport's Slater. Might he go also to the one in Texas in two years?
"If I'm able to," he said, "but, hell, I barely made this one."
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