![]() In Sacramento, the Gold Country Base of the United States Submarine Veterans, Inc., for the 35th year, will place wreaths on the Sacramento River at 9 a.m. On or about December 7 each year, veterans organizations across the nation and in California hold National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremonies. Pearl Harbor survivors are indeed a microcosm of all living World War II veterans, who now number 167,300 nationally – about 16,000 of them living in California – and are expiring at a rate of about 230 per day, according to estimates by the U.S. ![]() Northern California lost two of its Pearl Harbor survivors just three days apart in May with the deaths of USS Pennsylvania Mickey Ganitch, 102, of San Leandro and the USS Lexington’s Garfield Ware, 99, of Lake Tahoe. The USS Arizona sinking in a cloud of smoke after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Most are now around 100 years old, on one side or the other. There might be more than we know, because some for whatever reasons didn’t join the various survivor association chapters. Today, known survivors number fewer than 1,500 overall, with just a few of them in California. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association once numbered 18,000 members nationally and 70,000 worldwide. Their stories will be left told through black-and-white photographs and newsreels of the time, and in oral history recordings. Indeed, Pearl Harbor survivors are vanishing, soon to be lost to the ages. In fact, he is one of only two surviving veterans from the USS Arizona. Beyond his first-hand, eye-witness depiction of what happened on that day lies the reality that they might not get another opportunity to hear it directly from a Pearl Harbor survivor. With the 81 st anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack upon us, one can only hope that those who attended Conter’s Veterans Day talk truly appreciated its magnitude. “Remember Pearl Harbor!” became the driving slogan for Americans, to galvanize the resources-rich nation to ramp up its military industrial complex and destroy the Japanese military empire in just four years. In the process, “the sleeping giant” was awakened, as Japanese Admiral Yamamoto had predicted and feared. ![]() The attack also damaged or destroyed 19 ships including eight battleships, and drew the United States officially into World War II. Of the 2,403 Americans killed, 1,177 were his Arizona shipmates. On Veterans Day last month, USS Arizona Navy veteran Lou Conter told a gathering in Grass Valley about the fateful events of December 7, 1941-the day the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacked Pearl Harbor. sailors stand among wrecked airplanes and watch the explosion of the USS Shaw from Ford Island Naval Station during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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