With Tears, ‘Taps’ Bush Honors Dead of Pearl Harbor : Anniversary: Declaring ‘this is no time for recriminations,’ he acknowledges Tokyo’s remorse, and apologizes for internment of Japanese-Americans.

A half-century later, in a smaller, less quarrelsome but still perilous world, the mournful strains of taps echoed over tropical blue-green waters Saturday as America commemorated Imperial Japan’s attack on the anchored fleet of the United States at Pearl Harbor, and the nation’s entry into World War II.

Old memories and fresh tears welled up as President and Mrs. Bush cast flowers into the water over the sunken battleship Arizona to honor the dead. Then, the President urged America to lift its eyes unflinchingly to its responsibilities across the globe and warned against the urge to withdraw into the isolation of its own problems.

Praying that America’s young be given “the same courage that pulsed in the blood of their fathers,” Bush stood virtually alone in the spotlight Saturday. He said he could “still see the faces” of his fallen comrades from World War II, but felt no rancor toward Japan. “This is no time for recriminations,” he said.

However, Bush said he did feel remorseful for those in America who were interned by their own country because of their Japanese ancestry, and he apologized for “the great injustice” done to them.

Against the backdrop of the attack site, with the American flag snapping in the stiff breeze on aclear warm morning, Bush described two Japans. There was the Empire--the “Tojo regime”--of Dec. 7, 1941, that left America “wounded and reeling.” And there is the Democratic Japan of 1991. America can stand proud, Bush said, that out of the blood of war “we made our enemies our friends.”

He offered his appreciation to the modern Japan for the extent to which it expressed “remorse” for the attack.

Exactly 50 years after the first explosion--at 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time as signaled by a ship’s mournful whistle--Bush and his wife, Barbara, standing on the memorial that straddles the sunken Arizona, bowed their heads and led the nation in a minute of silence to honor the 2,403 killed here that day and the 98,594 who died in the Pacific during the 1,346 days of war to follow.

A minute later, jet fighters broke the quiet over Honolulu and passed above in a missing-man formation.

Then, the President and First Lady dropped leis of ilina blossoms onto the well of the memorial, where the ship, visible in the water below, still weeps a gallon of oil a day from its engine room.

The ceremony opened floodgates of memories--of loss, of pain, of struggle, of sacrifice, of innocence lost, of lives changed forever. And thousands, maybe many tens of thousands, of Americans found themselves joining the old ship and their President in weeping. Bush could barely finish his remarks, so powerful was the moment. He turned from the well, and then turned back to gaze again into the water.

“Think of how it was for these heroes of the harbor, men who were also husbands, fathers, brothers, sons,” he told the audience. “Imagine the chaos. Imagine the chaos of guns and smoke, flaming water and ghastly carnage--2,403 Americans gave their lives. But in this haunting place, they live forever in our memory, reminding us gently, selflessly, like chimes in the distant night.”

Saturday’s commemoration, after a lengthy buildup and much international reflection-- Why then? Where now? --allowed survivors the expression of well-aged, well-deserved personal feelings. These were the emotions of once-young men and women swept into the conflagration of global war, their memories fixed after all these years with a crystalline intensity.

“On that day, Hell was in session,” said Donald K. Ross, a one-time naval machinist’s mate who was awarded the Medal of Honor for helping get the battleship Nevada underway during the attack. Everything about the moment--from the size of a cable he had to cut (1 7/8 inches) to the middle names of fellow sailors--was etched unalterably in his mind.

Also on the minds of the participants, and the entire nation, was the old enemy, Japan.

“Fifty years hasn’t healed us all,” said John Cunha of Wareham, Mass., who was a sailor aboard the submarine-tender Pelias in 1941. It’s a distant memory, he said, but it still stings. “It was a dirty, rotten, sneaky attack. It was murder.”

But for most here, the sharp edges of such words seemed softened by time.

“You got to go on,” sighed Robert Duvall of Dallas, a 19-year-old seaman aboard the warship California in 1941. “I never felt the Japanese people had a whole hell of a lot to do with it. I don’t hold no prejudices. Besides, we did give ‘em a good lickin’.”

Bush, a one-time Navy carrier pilot who fought in the Pacific with what he said was an “intense hatred” of the Japanese, told a crowd that he had wondered how he would feel on this day, 50 years later. He answered by saying he held “no rancor in my heart toward Germany and Japan. This is no time for recriminations. World War II is over. It’s history. We won. We crushed totalitarianism. We made our enemies our friends.”

And Bush tried to smooth over all the fuss about apologies for the long-ago attack.

“Today all Americans should acknowledge Japan’s Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s national statement of deep remorse concerning the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was thoughtful, it was a difficult expression much appreciated by the people of the United States of America.”

On Friday, after the Japanese parliament failed to adopt a formal apology for its attack on Pearl Harbor, Miyazawa said in an interview, “We feel deep responsibility for the damage of suffering we brought on all the people of the United States and the Asia-Pacific region by entering into World War II with our attack on Pearl Harbor.”

The President had an apology of his own to offer. He said the internment of American citizens because of their Japanese ancestry was “a great injustice and it will never be repeated.”

The 67-year-old Bush, to the discomfort of some veterans, appeared to dominate the commemoration, delivering three wide-ranging speeches and attending other events.

He began at daybreak at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the Punchbowl Crater above Honolulu where more than 5,000 Pearl Harbor survivors and their families had gathered before dawn. He then traveled to the Arizona, where the war began, and finally made his way to a stage set against the backdrop of the battleship Missouri, on which the war ended with the signing of the Japanese surrender.

Bush frequently asked the nation to keep sight of the lessons of Pearl Harbor--not the least of which, he said, is that isolationism leads to vulnerability.

Probably the last U.S. President to have fought in World War II, he offered his own daybreak prayer at the Punchbowl for those Americans too young to recall the experience:

“Today as we remember the sacrifices of our country, I salute all of you, the survivors of Pearl Harbor. And I ask all Americans to join me in a prayer: Lord, give our rising generations the wisdom to cherish their freedom and security as hard-won treasures. Lord, give them the same courage that pulsed in the blood of their fathers.”

Later, on the pier near the Missouri, with the waters of Pearl Harbor behind him, Bush spoke of his own first sight of the anchorage five months after the start of the war. From the deck of the carrier San Jacinto he could see the battleship Utah resting on its side while “parts of the Arizona still stood silent in the water.”

“Everywhere the skeletons of ships reached out,” Bush recalled, “as if to demand remembrance and warn us of our own mortality.”

Bush called for the memory of the “Heroes of the Harbor”--the men who “strapped pistols over pajamas” and fired small guns in vain at attacking Japanese planes, who heeded the words of Chaplain Howell Forgy as he urged his men to “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”

With Battleship Row and the tomb that is the Arizona below, he urged: “Look into your hearts, and minds. You will see boys who this day became men, and men who became heroes.

“Look at the water here--clear and quiet, bidding us to sum up and remember. One day,” he concluded, “in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to another, better world.”

“I can still see the faces of my fallen comrades,” Bush said as he leaned forward to speak in earnest to hundreds of Pearl Harbor veterans gathered along supply pier Kilo Eight, constructed long after the raid, “and I’ll bet you can see the faces of your fallen comrades, too.

“But,” the President said as he looked down on the men of his generation, “don’t you think they’re saying: ‘Fifty years have passed. Our country is the undisputed leader of the free world. We are at peace.’ Don’t you think each one is saying: ‘I did not die in vain.’?”

At the Punchbowl, in solemn ceremonies after the President departed, survivors, some moving slowly with canes or wheelchairs, carried themselves with the nobility of age, the fires of ambition and rivalry cooled but their deeds still hot in their minds.

As a Marine band played a muted hymn, an honor guard laid wreaths in groups of four at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Michael Stecz, 70, of Castro Valley, Calif., had been busy capturing the developing events on a 35-millimeter camera strung around his neck, but as the wreaths mounted inexorably until they nearly covered the tomb, Stecz’s camera gave way to his handkerchief. He wept silently for several minutes before regaining his composure.

A quartermaster 3rd class aboard the battleship Oklahoma when the Japanese Zeros and dive-bombers swept over the harbor, Stecz had been able to escape his burning, capsizing ship by crawling through a porthole.

“I was thinking of my shipmates,” Stecz said, explaining his tears. “I left behind 448 of my shipmates who died. I came to pay my respects. I feel deeply sorry they had to go for our country. I’m happy that I came.”

Throughout Honolulu, many survivors reconciled themselves to the reality that this Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor was their finale. “We’ve come back, but we’ll never be back here again,” said Tom Murphy of Boston, who 50 years ago was a 22-year-old soldier at Schofield Barracks. “We’ll say goodby to our comrades who are dead. And after that, we’ll say goodby to each other. We’re all too old to come back.”

Bernard Langner of Hayward, Calif., was a 19-year-old ground support technician at Kaneohe Naval Air Station in December, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor, and the war that followed, diminished his sense of trust, of freedom and happiness forever, he said. But now, he added, it is time to let things rest.

“It’s like reading a book,” Langner said. “This is the last chapter, the last paragraph, the last sentence. Period.”

Contributing to this story were staff writers Douglas Jehl and Melissa Healy, special correspondent Susan Essoyan and researcher Doug Conner.