Cheerfulness to End With the Call of a Bugle

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor lasted less than two horrible hours in 1941, but the commemoration in 1991 has gone enthusiastically on for more than a month and comes to its culmination today with memorial ceremonies atop the sunken battleship Arizona, at the national cemetery known as the Punchbowl, at Hickam Field and other Hawaii sites known to the fiery history of that one Sunday morning so long ago.

An estimated 10,000 people, including President Bush and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, are converging on Honolulu for ceremonies marking America’s forced entry into World War II--that one hour and 50 minutes which forever altered the lives of millions.

Of the participants, the most honored are the 4,000 to 5,000 military survivors of those two Japanese bombing raids of the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7.

On Friday they gathered en masse, these men and a few women now in their 70s, and strolled down the main street of Waikiki under tropical rain for a starkly simple, but emotionally moving parade.

They wore Hawaiian shirts, white pants and dirty-white garrison caps of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Assn. Many needed canes, some held the arms of children and grandchildren, some were in wheelchairs, and the others walked in groups, no longer interested in marching in step. They smiled and hugged one another and lifted slack arms into sharp salutes before flags that were laden with battle ribbons, and the scene on the wet pavement of Waikiki spoke of true dignity.

Many said it would probably be their last meeting with the comrades who shared their experience on Dec. 7, 1941.

“Have you ever seen so many old men at one place?” laughed survivor Joe Meadows.

Just as in the days proceeding the war, these veterans have spent these days leading up to Dec. 7 enjoying themselves in the tropics.

And just as on that weekend a half-century ago, the survivors on Friday night planned a giant dance and “battle of music” with big bands playing the songs of the 1940s. They recalled that just such a dance in 1941 left many of them with hangovers when the first Japanese warplanes appeared over Hospital Point on the approach to Pearl.

All the lightheartedness will end early this morning when the sound of a bugle will propel the survivors--and their nation--back to that moment when national innocence was lost.

Because of its significance and its sure-fire emotional punch, the commemoration has drawn more journalists than covered the U.S. and allied military in the Persian Gulf War. Military officials said more than 1,500 journalists applied for credentials here.

And it might be a good thing, too, because nearly everybody seems to want in on the act. The President scheduled no fewer than three back-to-back speeches.

On Thursday, thousands of Pearl Harbor survivors and their families had squinted happily into a bright sun for photographs, a speech from Cheney and the unfurling of a new memorial flag.

“Pearl Harbor was the beginning of the end for dictators who threatened democracy on every continent,” Cheney said. “Pearl Harbor signified the end of isolationism and the beginning of an era in which the United States would accept the burdens and responsibilities of world leadership.”

Pearl Harbor’s lesson is that the nation must not dismantle substantial military capabilities after a victory, as it did after World War I, World War II and Vietnam, said Cheney.

To hearty applause, he cautioned that the nation “cannot . . . slash the defense budget mindlessly to pay for other programs, or save pet projects to benefit local constituencies at the cost of our troops’ readiness and safety.”

A lighter but also well-received speech to the survivors was given Thursday by Lenore Rickert, who was a Navy nurse on duty at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Not only did Americans in the military pull together that day, she recalled, but even ladies of the night from Honolulu’s Hotel Street red light district “came to the hospital to help, showing that they could do other things also.”

“We probably couldn’t have gotten the war over as fast if we hadn’t had them,” she said in a gesture of nostalgic generosity.

Times special correspondent Susan Essoyan also contributed to this story.

The Arizona Memorial

President Eisenhower approved construction of the Arizona Memorial during his second term in 1958. In 1961, President Kennedy signed a bill appropriating $150,000 for construction of the memorial by the 87th Congress. The Pacific War Memorial Commission spearheaded a fund-raising drive for its completion, and in 1962 the monument was dedicated.

The Memorial Dedicated: May 30, 1962 Structure: 36 feet wide 21 feet high at the ends, tapers to 27 feet wide by 14 feet high at the center. Supported by two 250-ton concrete girders that rest on 36 pre-pressed pilings driven into the harbor bottom. No part of the structure touches the hulk of the Arizona. Inside: There are 3 sections: the museum room, containing mementos from the ship; the assembly room, which can accommodate up to 200 people, and the shrine room, which has a wall inscribed with the names of the 1,177 men who died when the ship went down. Cost: $532,000

USS Arizona Commissioned on Oct. 17, 1916 at a cost of $13,000,000. Fatally hit 0806 hrs. on Dec. 7, 1941 Water length: 608 feet. Width: 106 feet at maximum beam. Weight: 36,600 tons. Armament: 12 14-inch guns, eight 5-inch 25-caliber guns and multiple 5-inch 51-caliber guns.

Sources: USS Arizona Memorial, National Park Service Visitor Center and Remembering Pearl Harbor.