YouTube Transcript:
Remembering Pearl Harbor

the Japanese attack on Hawaii on
December 7th 1941 sparked the defiant
battlecry remember Pearl Harbor and even
75 years later the dwindling ranks of
those who watched the attack happen
remember it still our cover story is
reported by Lee
Cowen Hawaii's Pearl Harbor it was just
a place before it became a memorial a
tropically tranquil place that was
darinda Nicholson's childhood home this
was my favorite part of the neighborhood
because darinda was just 6 years old
that Sunday in
1941 born in Hawaii her family was
civilian and lived near the dock for the
famous PanAm
Clippers the idea of War coming to this
remote Pacific Outpost seemed to most
here about as likely as a white Hawaiian
Christmas but at 7:55 a.m. on December
7th a storm did indeed
come they were coming right over the
house and when you came outside and you
looked up they were right there right
overhead canopies pushed back and could
see the Pilot's faces they were that
close what did you think when you saw
that oh
I just leaned closer to my dad and
hugged him a little
closer six Japanese aircraft carriers
had sailed to within 300 miles of the
Hawaiian Islands loaded with more than
350 planes that were on a waho like a
swarm of angry mosquitoes dinda's family
fled to the relative safety of the
island sugar cane Fields but Navy Seaman
dick jrao now
95 had nowhere to go two 300 yard over
there is where I was he had joined the
Navy at age 19 and was part of the crew
that manned the pby Catalina flying
boats out of the Naval Air Station at
Fort Island how close were the bombs
falling to
your within 100 yards he High tailed it
to a nearby ditch for cover and when I
first went in it I'm laying on the
bottom of
it
and another fella come jumping in right
on top of laying on top of me and he was
saying Hil Mar as fast as he could see
him and then I said well that takes care
of that part I don't have to do
that but then a Japanese pilot spotted
him this fell says well you might as
well turn over and watch this DB me I
turn over I just looking up I'm looking
up at a dive armor coming down straight
at you oh yeah banked out over the
Airfield and looked right down in the
ditch and I could look him right in the
eyee hanger 79 just one down from where
dick was still Bears the scars the
bullet holes and its bright blue window
panes remain reminders of the serenity
shattered on a quiet Sunday morning were
you mad were you angry confused I don't
really recall whether I was angry or not
a lot of people asked me if I was scared
and I'm sure I was if I wasn't something
wrong with me scores of planes were
bruised and battered by at the Army
Aires hiam Airfield nearby the Japanese
assault continued parked wing tip to
wing tip nearly every American warbird
was incinerated before ever Taking
Flight but Japan's real Target was
Battleship Row the Utah shown capsized
and partially sunk within minutes the
California was sinking and the Oklahoma
had also capsized trapping hundreds in
her Hull the whole side of Battleship
Roll Clear down to the Arizona is
covered with flames the people in the
Water Swimming trying to get out it was
a terrible terrible scene 95-year-old
Delton Wally Walling was perched high in
a patrol tower that day and saw it all
unfold can you imagine how I'm feeling
now when I'm watching my great Navy
stuffed down my
throat I'm
devastated man and it got worse not far
away the shaw a destroyer exploded with
such ferocity it sent pieces flying a
half mile away a moment captured in this
iconic photograph that almost knocked us
off in the
tower but it was the Arizona that got
the worst of it hit by armor-piercing
bombs it too exploded killing
1,177 the single largest loss of life in
American Naval History her Hull is still
in the mud where she
the Arizona Remains the final resting
place for most of her crew including 23
sets of Brothers family dying
shoulder-to-shoulder in a war that
hadn't even been declared when we talk
to people they will say oh my father or
my grandfather wouldn't s us anything
until he was 60 or 70 years old they
were told to forget about it to just get
on with their lives and forget it Craig
nilson spent the last 5 years compiling
one of the most recent accounts of Pearl
Harbor published by Simon and Schuster a
CBS company December 7th 1941 he says
was arguably just as pivotal to our
identity as the 4th of July
1776 it completely transformed the
United States at that moment we were
14th military power in the World Behind
uh Sweden so it served really as a
rallying cry in a way it made us put on
our big boy pants and grow up and become
a global
leader the US did bounce back in double
time all but three of the ships damaged
or sunk on December 7th were raised
repaired and sailed again in fact by the
end of the war the US had chased down
and destroyed every Japanese aircraft
carrier used to launch the attack this
is the greatest Generation in the world
and we're down to the handful left thank
you for your
service thank you Wally like most of the
other 40,000 or so enlisted men on aahu
that day was just a teenager back then
but history's clock is Relentless I see
their faces right before me and know
they're
gone Pearl Harbor's Chief historian
Daniel Martinez has worked here for 32
years and with each passing anniversary
he worries the collective memory of
December 7th is fading most of the young
people that come here don't have a clue
what happened at this place they don't
even know who won the War how will we
remember World War II after they're
gone this was a huge open part of the
harbor darinda Nicholson now lives in
Kansas City Missouri but has made the
nearly 5,000 m trip here to Pearl Harbor
for almost every anniversary to tell her
story sometimes bringing with her the
tiny gas mask that she and her brother
wore as children in the days after the
attack so why did you keep this all
those years oh it's my my
history it was history that changed her
life and ours the cry remember Pearl
harber sounds pretty obvious but the
challenge for the next generation is to
really remember absent those who will no
longer be here to remind us face to face
they are my heroes and I will tell their
stories as long as I live