On a bright and windy day, Adm. Robert Willard paid tribute to America’s veterans, especially recognizing the nearly 30,000 service members missing in action, lost or buried at sea during the country’s wars.

In his Veterans Day address at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Willard recalled that America and its allies, 10 years after the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, are "at war still earnestly seeking an honorable end."

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who is here to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, noted at the Punchbowl ceremony that America and Australia have been formal allies for the past 60 years.

But Gillard said the nations’ friendship goes back even further to World War II, when Australia’s fear of a Japanese invasion "was destroyed by the sailors from your country" in the Battle the of Coral Sea.

"It is a battle that is immortalized in Australia," she said.

Gillard added: "Today Australians remember your fallen. I want you to know Australia does not forget. They remember the origin of this day itself. I believe something of the peace-loving character of your people is shown in the importance you place on this day: Nov. 11. It is not the anniversary of the onset of a great conflict nor the commentation of a great victory or a great feat of arms. It is the day and the hour of the end of the ‘great war.’

"You remember your veterans in the moment to which each dedicated their dearest hopes. You remember them at the moment that peace began."

Willard, a Navy aviator who heads the Pacific Command, said he is proud of the servicemen and women "who continue to shelter American citizens from the enemy. On their shoulders is the weight of guarding America’s freedom — a load that is sometimes very heavy.

"We know they are not the first to bear the weight, and they won’t be the last. They serve knowing their brothers and sisters have shared the load and that they will never be forsaken."

He noted that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as Armistice Day in 1919, marking the end of World War I a year earlier. In 1954, Congress enacted legislation changing the name to Veterans Day.

Willard closed his address by paraphrasing a popular World War I poem, "In Flanders Field."

Willard, Gov. Neil Abercrombie, Mayor Peter Carlisle and U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, were the first to lay a memorial wreath at Punchbowl. They were followed by Gillard and 40 other veterans organizations that offered floral tributes.

As part of the Punchbowl ceremony, four Hawaii Air National Guard F-22 Raptor fighter jets flew the missing-man formation over the crater, which is the burial place for 34,000 U.S. veterans, including President Barack Obama’s grandfather Stanley Dunham; U.S. Sen. Spark Matsunaga, a member of the 100th Battalion; Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut who died in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion; Col. Charles Lacy Veach, a Vietnam War veteran and an astronaut; World War II correspondent Ernie Taylor Pyle; Gov. John A. Burns; and U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink.

Today, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea will lay wreaths in separate ceremonies at Punchbowl. They are here for the APEC summit.

Other Veterans Day ceremonies were held at Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe, the Pearl Harbor Submarine Park hosted by U.S. Subvets and the USS Missouri Memorial on Ford Island.