Have a local veteran here in my small town that was a young lad of 17 on Dec 7,1941 ans at Pearl that morning. There was a ceremony in Des Moines and he was there as he has been for many years. He wears his uniform (SM1) every year at the memorial day celebration every year. Still in pretty good health but the years are showing.
Perhaps its because I live in a Navy town (Virginia Beach/Norfolk, VA area), but I saw plenty of Pearl Harbor Day coverage. I volunteer on the battleship Wisconsin (BB-64) and we had quite a few families on board over the weekend discussing Pearl Harbor. Yesterday and early this morning several hundred public school children were on board for the same purpose. The battleship is fortunate to have several WWII veteran's who were available to talk to the junior and high school students who participated. I love living in a Navy town.
My father-in-law was on the USS Texas on D-Day. He was a first class Musician and when not playing he helped out with corpmen duties. On D-Day he was on the ship watching everything that was happening on the beaches. The shooting stopped just before he was about to head for the beach himself. He doesn't talk about what he saw there, then again few every did. Earlier this year we had to move the in-laws into a retirement home and while cleaning out their house I came across a lot of letters that were written by him and two of his brothers (Army) that were over in Europe at that time. One of the letters was labeled "Last one from Sonny". It talked about how Sonny, Pete and Rex (in-law) were suppose to get together in France but for some reason Rex wasn't allowed off the ship. Right after this letter was written Sonny had broken his leg some how and was in a field hospital. While there, he wrote a letter home to his parents telling them that he was being sent home to finish recovering. Unfortunately, after mailing the letter he had an embolism and died. The letter from the Army got home before his personal letter did.
The other thing that I found in all the paperwork is a printed copy of what the Capt said after the ship was out to sea about what their mission was - D-Day!
I haven't gone through all of the paperwork but I'm sure that I'll find some other interesting stuff from that time.
