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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Stand for the Survivors


By Alycia Anderson, 365 Days of Service, HI Region

I was working the December 7th ceremony at Pearl Harbor. This year we had a HUGE ceremony with over 200 Pearl Harbor Survivors in attendance with another couple thousand people in the audience to watch the ceremony and go into the brand new museum exhibits that would open after the speeches. My job of the day was...nothing. haha. I had not been assigned anything so I roamed around the grounds to see if I could help anyone. After more than an hour of watching thousands of people making their way to the seating area, I find a survivor and his wife looking a little lost and go up to help them to their seats. Only to find when I got to the survivor area there were soooo many survivors without seats. Biggest sadness but I knew that would not be acceptable. So after seeing some military volunteers caring seats, I find out that they took them from the back of the seating area, where general public were allowed to sit. When I get there I see that only a few chairs are open. Quickly thinking what to do I say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, some of our Pearl Harbor Survivors do not have a seat. Is there anyone willing to donate their seat to them?" and what I expected to happen did. More than a dozen men and women, civilians and military stood up and said you can have mine. :D Very happily I took the chairs to the men and women who fought 65 years ago for my freedom today.
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2 comments:

  1. JaniceDecember 9, 2010 at 11:16 PM

    They mentioned earlier that perhaps this would be the last gathering of the Pearl Harbor Survivors. Did not expect to read that there still were so many in attendance. Chicken skin story.

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  2. leeshDecember 13, 2010 at 11:07 AM

    The survivors voted and they are going to stay as an organized group, running it themselves. And even if they did disband the group, a large number of them would still probably come out each year, if health and money allow. They only say that this may be their last gathering because everyone is getting old and its hard for them to travel and keep up the paper work necessary to keep their association going.

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