>Pearl Harbor attack, 70 years ago, still fresh in the memories of old sailors
By Bruce Newman
From Dec. 7, 1941 until long after VJ Day and the end of World War II, Americans referred to the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor as a “sneak attack.” In his declaration of war before a joint session of Congress the next day, President Franklin Roosevelt captured the nation’s shock and fury, promising it would be “a date which will live in infamy.”
But on this 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, with old war wounds healed and racial sensitivities heightened, the phrase used more often to describe that day is “surprise attack.” For most Americans, the “infamy” of Dec. 7, 1941 has receded since Sept. 11, 2001.
The survivors of those doomed ships — many from the Bay Area — are mostly hard of hearing now, but the buzz and the boom of the bombs from that day still ring in the ears of John Tait of Concord, Ed Silveira of Hayward and Dempson Arellano of Antioch. Gordon Van Hauser, who lived in San Carlos until his death in 2008, often spoke of his service not in terms of fighting for his own life, but for the life of his country.
