Mineola Veterans Remember Pearl Harbor

Mineola veterans held a remembrance ceremony Tuesday to mark the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and honor the memories of the servicemen and women who perished that day.

Several members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Private Adolf Block Post #1305, and the American Legion, Mineola Memorial Post #349, were on hand to take part in the ceremony. The handful of veterans battled the cold weather to remember the historical importance of the attack on our nation and to give thanks and say prayers for the fallen next to Memorial Rock, rendering salutes as taps mournfully played.

On that fateful day in 1941, 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,282 were wounded when the Empire of Japan initiated a coordinated surprise aerial attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii aimed at crippling the United States' Pacific fleet. Japan formally declared war on the United States after the attack. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States four days later, which the United States reciprocated as it entered World War II.

Attending the ceremony was Gerry Olsen, a U.S. Navy World War II veteran and a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion. On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was duck hunting in Rocky Point, New York when he heard the news bulletin over the radio in his car. He was working for the Ford Instrument Company at the time, which was making war equipment for the Department of Defense. Olsen enlisted in the Navy shortly thereafter and served a year in the Atlantic on convoy duty and another year in the Pacific where he took part in the invasion of Okinawa and the occupation of Japan.

Now 91, Olsen says he is one of twelve sailors left from the original crew of 200 of the USS Joseph E. Campbell, the ship on which he served.

For VFW Commander Manny Grilo the significance of remembering Pearl Harbor is that an average of 1,000 World War II veterans are dying everyday." Grilo pointed out that as these veterans go, so does the memories of our collective conscience in remembering important times in our nation's timeline, like the attack at Pearl Harbor.

He laments this and what he says is the failure of the newer generations to remember their country's own history.  A Vietnam veteran, Grilo served with the U.S. Army's famed Big Red One 1st Infantry Division as part of a Special Forces group known as the "Black Lions" and feels that the torch has been passed on to him and his fellow Vietnam veterans from the veterans of World War II and the Korean War, who governed the veterans organizations when he came home from Vietnam.

Grilo said that he and his fellow veterans feel they owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to their predecessors and therefore they carry on the traditions started by those veterans who served during World War II, by honoring those who died at Pearl Harbor.