![]() The UA will mark the 77th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack Friday morning at the memorial, which sits a few hundred feet from a tower that houses one of the USS Arizona's bells. And there is something about the Arizona that resonates." "Everybody is very happy when I approach them," she said. No one else, it turned out, had done the work in all these years. She's written bios of 394 of the crewmen, making her way through about one-third of the list. Two and a half years later, she's still at it. "I assumed somebody had done this before and that I just needed to find it and get their permission." "I said, 'I’ll help you track it down. I'll give you two weeks,'" said Buel, whose husband, David Carter, designed the memorial. As work progressed on campus, Bobbie Jo Buel, a former newspaper editor, offered to go a step further and compile short biographies of the 1,177 sailors and Marines as a way to help visitors go beyond the names. The UA memorial, dedicated in 2016, was meant to ensure the names of those crewmen weren't forgotten. But some stories have never been told, especially stories about the 1,177 crew members who died in the attack. Over time, other stories from the Arizona have emerged, about unsung heroes and harrowing escapes. 7, 1941.Īfter 77 years, the story of the mighty battleship has been told again and again: how it took heavy fire, how a bomb blew it apart, how it sank into the harbor. On the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, embedded in the curving brick walls of a memorial, are rows of medallions, each bearing the name of a USS Arizona crew member killed when Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. He's expected to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.Watch Video: 77 years on, still stories to tell about USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor Several families were scheduled to rebury their newly identified loved ones on Friday, including Navy Seaman 1st Class William Bruesewitz of Appleton, Wisconsin. It has said it expects to identify about 80 percent of the 388 by 2020. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has identified 168 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma since the exhumations three years ago. The Oklahoma had the second-highest number of dead after the Arizona at 429, though only 35 were identified in the immediate years after the attack. In 2015, 388 sets of remains were exhumed from the USS Oklahoma and buried in a national cemetery in Honolulu. Most remain entombed in the sunken hull of the battleship at the bottom of the harbor.ĭozens of those killed in the attack have been recently identified and reburied in cemeteries across the country after the military launched a new effort to analyze bones and DNA of hundreds long classified as "unknowns." The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines, the greatest number of casualties from any ship. The Arizona sank after two bombs hit the ship, triggering tremendous explosions. This year, no survivor from the USS Arizona attended the ceremony as none of the men were able to make the trip to Hawaii. In fact, it charged it," he said in a keynote address. "Despite these losses, it did not break the American spirit. He cited 21 vessels damaged or sunk, 170 planes destroyed, more than 2,400 people dead, including servicemen and civilians. Indo-Pacific Command, said the nation can never forget the heavy price paid on that day. ![]() Still, most stood to salute for the national anthem.Īdm. The youngest of the survivors are now in their mid-90s. He carried injured people to the mess hall and set them on mattresses grabbed from the barracks above. ![]() I helped the ones that couldn't swim, who were too badly injured or whatever and helped them to shore," said Mathrusse, now 95. "The guys were getting hurt, bombs and shells going off in the water. ![]() He was an 18-year-old seaman second class walking out of the chow hall on Ford Island to see a friend on the USS West Virginia when the bombing began. John Mathrursse traveled to Hawaii for the event from Mountain View, California. They joined dignitaries, active duty troops and members of the public in observing a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the time the bombing began on Dec. PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - About 20 survivors gathered at Pearl Harbor on Friday to pay tribute to the thousands of men lost in the Japanese attack 77 years ago. ![]()
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