Pearl Harbor vets plan to meet again

Official get-togethers of reunion group come to an end this year

Four of the remaining nine USS Arizona survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack are vowing this year's anniversary won't be their last reunion.

The men in their 90s gathered for a news conference Tuesday in a building overlooking the memorial that sits on top of the battleship that sank in the Dec 7, 1941, Japanese attack. Even though it's the last official survivor gathering of the USS Arizona Reunion Association, the men said they still plan to get together, even if not in Hawaii.

"I don't think this is going to be our last. ... We've still got time to go," said Louis Conter, 93, of Grass Valley, California. "We'll be back out here no matter whether the rest of the crowd can make it or not."

Donald Stratton, 92, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was one of the few survivors of a gun director in the forward part of the ship. More than 65 percent of his body was burned. Stratton was hospitalized for more than year and then medically discharged from the Navy. He re-enlisted a year later.

"The good Lord saved just a few of us," he said.

Sunday marks the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack that killed 2,403 sailors, Marines and soldiers. During a private event on Sunday, the four men will toast their shipmates, drinking from replicas of Champagne glasses from the USS Arizona. They will share a bottle of sparkling wine that was a gift to the survivors association from then-president Gerald Ford's visit to Spain in 1975.

The men arrived at the Pearl Harbor visitor center on Tuesday to military salutes, music from the US Navy Pacific Fleet Band and photos from tourists. At the news conference, they reminisced about the attack.

"I learned something about faith," said John Anderson, 97, of Roswell, New Mexico, recalling that he had just gone to church services and was heading to breakfast when someone said they saw the planes coming. He became teary-eyed as he discussed his twin brother dying in the attack.

"It's always like yesterday when we're out here," said Conter.

(China Daily 12/04/2014 page10)