Pearl Harbor ceremony marks 72nd anniversary
About 2,500 gathered at Pearl Harbor on Saturday to remember those killed in the 1941 Japanese attack that launched the U.S. into World War II.
The crowd observed a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the minute the bombing began 72 years ago.
A vintage World War II-era airplane – a 1944 North American SNJ-5B – flew overhead to break the silence. The Hawaii Air National Guard has used its fighter jets and helicopters to perform the flyover for many years, but federal budget cuts prevented it from participating this year.
About 50 survivors returned to Pearl Harbor for the ceremony.
The Navy and National Park Service co-hosted the ceremony, which was open to the public. Their theme for the event, “Sound the Alarm,” explores how Americans answered a call to duty in the wake of the attack.
The current U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the U.S. remembers the warning from those who survived.
“We remember Pearl Harbor, we are vigilant, and we are ready to fight tonight and win,” Harris said. “Not only are we poised to respond to the first notes of the alarm bell, we are also doing everything possible to keep those alarms from sounding in the first place.”
Former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia delivered the keynote address.
The Vietnam War veteran is currently secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which is responsible for managing overseas cemeteries for fallen American troops.
Later in the day, Pearl Harbor survivors joined military and government officials in a parade through Waikiki.
Source AP
“The Horse in the City: Living Machines in Urban America” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) has just been published in paperback. It is available through Amazon Joel A. Tarr and Clay McShane are the co-authors.
This is the product description: The nineteenth century was the golden age of the horse. In urban America, the indispensable horse provided the power for not only vehicles that moved freight, transported passengers, and fought fires but also equipment in breweries, mills, foundries, and machine shops. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, prominent scholars of American urban life, here explore the critical role that the horse played in the growing nineteenth-century metropolis. Using such diverse sources as veterinary manuals, stable periodicals, teamster magazines, city newspapers, and agricultural yearbooks, they examine how the horses were housed and fed and how workers bred, trained, marketed, and employed their four-legged assets. Not omitting the problems of waste removal and corpse disposal, they touch on the municipal challenges of maintaining a safe and productive living environment for both horses and people and the rise of organizations like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In addition to providing an insightful account of life and work in nineteenth-century urban America, The Horse in the City brings us to a richer understanding of how the animal fared in this unnatural and presumably uncomfortable setting.
I read the book a few years ago and recommend it highly. One of Mr. Tarr’s articles appears on our web site. URBAN POLLUTION -Many long years ago