USS Arizona survivors to miss Pearl Harbor ceremony

About 20 Pearl Harbor survivors are expected to attend ceremonies Friday in Hawaii to remember the thousands of men killed in the Japanese attack 77 years ago. But for the first time, no one who survived the bombing of the USS Arizona will be present. The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the attack, the greatest number of any ship. All five of the remaining Arizona survivors are in their 90s, and none could make the trip to Hawaii this year, mostly for health reasons.

“Once all these Pearl Harbor survivors are gone, and the people who knew them are gone, we’re going to have lost this last living connection,” World War II author Michael Wenger told Hawaii News Now.

The U.S. Navy and National Park Service will host Friday’s event overlooking the harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. There will be a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m. HST, the time the attack began on Dec. 7, 1941, followed by a flyover by Hawaii Air National Guard F-22 jets in a “missing man formation.”

Altogether, the attack killed nearly 2,400 U.S. servicemen. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is still identifying remains from the attack. Several families are scheduled to rebury newly identified servicemen on Friday.