Due to the weather, event organizers have decided to cancel the observance ceremony on Saturday.
Some were below decks and felt it. Some heard it as explosions shattered the Sunday morning calm. And some watched in disbelief as the United States was thrust into World War II.
Seventy-two years later, a handful of veterans who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor would have gathered to remember the friends and shipmates who died on Dec. 7, 1941.
The Pacific Northwest Sons and Daughters of the Pearl Harbor Survivors would have held the observance at the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay.
With the World War II generation fading away, it’s up to those sons and daughters to carry the commemorative torch each Dec. 7, said Marc Lacy.
Lacy is president of the local chapter of the Sons and Daughters, and his family represents the generational shift: His dad died on March 25.
Harold Lacy was a 17-year-old radioman aboard the USS Tennessee when the battleship was hit by Japanese bombs.
There are still eight Pearl Harbor survivors in the area, but “some of them are in poor health,” Marc Lacy said.
Organizers had expected five or six Pearl Harbor survivors to attend Saturday’s event.
The observance would have included the casting of a floral wreath into the Columbia River.
Pearl Harbor survivor memories from the 2011 Vancouver observance:
http://youtu.be/lLbIjrf9lEY
