Pearl Harbor victims honored in ceremonies throughout Missouri

ST. LOUIS -- Often to the plaintive sound of a trumpeter playing taps, Missourians paused somberly Friday to remember the 60th anniversary of the Japanese airborne strikes on Pearl Harbor and the September terrorist attacks -- two events that vaulted America into war.

During a 40-minute observance on the steps of St. Louis' public library, twin U.S. fighter jets buzzed overhead as an American flag was raised, then lowered to half-staff in remembrances of twin tragedies that shocked and angered the nation.

At the veterans' cemetery at Jefferson Barracks in south St. Louis County -- site of the first permanent military installation west of the Mississippi -- 80-year-old Jim Parker and several other area Pearl Harbor survivors gathered to remember that day of infamy six decades ago. Taps played by chimes echoed across the graveyard, ending the yearly observance.

"It's nice to educate a new generation about what happened that day," said Parker, who was a sailor aboard the USS Oglala that sank in the Pearl Harbor attack. Parker, head of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association's local chapter that still has about 55 members, organized the observance at the graveyard's chapel, which was surrounded by American flags.

Similar observances were played out at veterans' halls throughout Missouri from the big cities to the rural outposts. All flags at Missouri's state buildings were ordered to spend Friday at half-staff.

While the events of Dec. 7, 1941, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks offer parallels, swelling American patriotism, Friday's observances should honor the World War II veterans as "the greatest generation," a military official said.

From the wreckage of Pearl Harbor, "they picked up their weapons and joined a fight they knew would last a long time," Rear Adm. Edward Fahy said in his address outside the St. Louis library. "Let us hope that these people who have sacrificed and given their lives will truly be able to see the end of war."

Comparing with Sept. 11

Several military veterans who attended that ceremony said that while both attacks 60 years apart were tragic and unprovoked, there are distinctions.

To them, the strikes on Pearl Harbor were meant to destroy military men and their ships. What happened Sept. 11 was intended to kill innocent civilians. And those at Pearl Harbor had the chance to fight back; those killed in the September attacks that toppled the World Trade Center's twin towers and damaged the Pentagon could not.

"The Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor were men of war shooting men of war, and our men of war shot back," said Roland DeGregorio, a 79-year-old former Marine wounded by a mortar shell's shrapnel on the South Pacific island of Iwo Jima in World War II's waning stages. "These terrorists killed 3,000 innocent civilians, and not one of them was going to do them bodily harm."

To Parker, events of Sept. 11 "were hundreds of times worse" than Pearl Harbor, involving "civilians -- policemen, firemen -- who didn't have a chance."