Editorial: Devotion to duty and one another

What draws them back, the Pearl Harbor survivors? Not only on decade marker anniversaries of the attack, such as today’s 80th, but almost every year?

Devotion to country, of course. But the annual commemorations also have demonstrated a more personal bond. That would be the one forged with comrades lost in the sinking of the USS Arizona and the five other U.S. ships sent to the bottom of the harbor or destroyed.

It’s a bond known to the generations that followed — soldiers in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, for instance, reuniting with their units for multiple tours of duty. But there was something about the service members who would be the core of the Greatest Generation that set them apart, and that sorting process began on Dec. 7, 1941.

The attack stunned a nation, still weary from the first world war and determined to stay out of it — until then. “A date which will live in infamy” was the historic phrase in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech that captured the shock of that moment.

In all, 2,403 service members were killed and 1,178 more were wounded that Sunday morning when Japanese bomber planes descended on the island. The wrecks of only two of the vessels — the Arizona and the USS Utah, still lie beneath the surface, and only the survivors from those crews have the right to be interred within the ships.

Harvey Hollis Milhorn, who died in 2002 at age 80, is now among the 45 whose final wish was to be laid to rest on the Arizona; the private ceremony is set for today. His granddaughter, Rachel Yarasavich, told Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer William Cole that when Milhorn would talk about the experience, he would say that he could see it.

The images had been burned into his memory, and one could understand why. He had written in his autobiography about the 500-foot-tall fireball, being blown into the railing of the machine-gun emplacement off the deck. The force of the explosion tore off his clothes. He saw the mangled bodies of his gun crew and his best friend.

Following protocol, Milhorn sought permission to abandon ship, dove over the side and swam through the oil to Ford Island.

How could anyone forget such a thing?

There have been other tales told by survivors in the national media coverage of this year’s events, some of which will be livestreamed (see facebook.com/PearlHarborNPS and pearlharbor events.com).

The story of 101-year-old Ike Schab, for example, who witnessed the mayhem from a docked ship, made national news. He needed extra care to make this year’s trip, and a campaign on GoFundMe made it possible.

The few surviving service members at Pearl Harbor that day seem determined to return to the spot where their lives, and the trajectory of history, changed forever. Over the years, they and their loved ones made sacrifices in a war effort countering what everyone saw as an existential threat.

The underlying causes of the conflicts that followed have seemed less clear-cut. Understandably, the war-weary nation has been driven instead to stay out of as many global entanglements as possible. The more recent tensions with China suggest, however, that keeping the peace in the Asia-Pacific region will require a delicate balance of diplomacy and military readiness.

What’s less understandable is the weakening commitment to nation and community. It’s seen, most tragically, in the current political divisions that have made emerging from the global pandemic so elusive.

Pearl Harbor has an eternal place in history, but America still has lessons to learn that go beyond that military legacy. They are lessons of unity in sacrifice, of duty to country, and to the compatriots who share a mission of service.