75th National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Commemoration

God bless my old friend Bro. Lawrence Bergeron, from Houma, LA, for bringing this video to my attention.   It is a recording of the 75th National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Commemoration held at Pearl Harbor on Pearl Harbor Day (December 7, 2016).  Remaining living survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack were in attendance.  I watched the Commemoration in its entirety, and had a flood of memories come back from the days we lived in Hawaii  The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association building, where I worked for 14 years, overlooked Pearl Harbor...so lots of nostalgia from the footage in this video.

Every person who considers himself or herself a patriot and/or who has a connection to Hawaii, will want to watch this video, or at the very least, portions of it.

For those who don't have the time to watch it all, here are the significant timelines during the presentation:

  4:45  Four F-22 Raptors flyover in the "Missing Man Formation"
  6:45  National Anthem
  7:35  Pan of the mountainside, including Aiea, where the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Assn. offices were located
  8:20  Hawaii State Song
  9:30  Guided missile destroyer USS Halsey floating by, who rendered honors to the USS Arizona and USS Utah Memorials
10:25  Honoring Pearl Harbor Attack survivors (including a poignant pan of the survivors in attendance)
12:55  Authentic Hawaiian Blessing
16:30  Reverand Tsunekiye Tanaka offering a prayer in Japanese (translation into English following his comments and prayer)
28:45  National Park Service (NPS) representative Jacqueline Ashwell recounting stories from Pearl Harbor attack survivors
35:45  NPS representative Laura Juss reviewing the role of the National Park system in our lives
40:55  Rear Admiral John V. Fuller honoring the living survivors of Pearl Harbor who were in attendance
45:00  Introduction of Keynote Speaker Harry B. Harris Jr, Admiral (whose mother, fittingly, was a Japanese American)
46:10  Keynote Speaker's absolutely stirring address
1:04:55  Wreath presentations to each of the branches of the military affected by the Pearl Harbor attack
1:22:30  Flyover by a vintage plane of the Pearl Harbor attack era

At the outset of his address, U.S. Pacific Command Commander Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. took a backhanded swipe at the San Francisco 49ers quarterback and and those who refuse to stand during the national anthem when he said, "You can bet that the men and women that we honor today - and those who died that fateful morning 75 years ago - never took a knee and never failed to stand when they heard our national anthem being played." (standing ovation)

I am reminded of the bumper sticker:  Some people spend an entire life wondering if they made a difference — SOLDIERS don’t have that problem