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By Thomas Keeler
316th Expeditionary Sustainment Command
LSA ANACONDA, Iraq – "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."– President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to a Joint Session of Congress, Dec. 8, 1941
The 213th Area Support Group opened the morning of, Dec. 7, with a short ceremony to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. The attacks brought the United States into World War II.
The 213th ASG commenced the ceremony at 7:53 a.m., the moment of the first strikes.
Col. Brian K. Leonhard, commander of the 213th ASG, delivered the keynote speech while his battalion stood in formation.
"Today, on the 66th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor," said Leonhard, "we stand here in Iraq, not only as Soldiers in the greatest Army in the world, but as citizens of the greatest country on the face of the earth, posed ready to give our lives in the name of freedom after the second attack on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001."
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a pre-emptive military strike on the United States' Pacific Fleet, based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by the empire of Japan's imperial Japanese Navy. Leonhard described the attack, which consisted of two aerial attack waves, totaling 350 aircraft, launched from six aircraft carriers, which in the end left 2,403 dead, 188 aircraft destroyed, and eight damaged or destroyed U.S. battleships.
Hawaii was a United States territory at the time of the attacks but also by then a strategic naval station and popular tourist destination. Hawaii did not become the 50th state until 1959.
Japan's assault on Pearl Harbor was part of a larger, coordinated attack on islands throughout the Pacific.
"As in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the memory of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor fueled determination to fight on," said Leonhard.
Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Wevodau, command sergeant major for the 213th ASG, said that the ceremony served its intent to bring together two significant events in history of the United States.
"We were trying to draw together the parallel of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, being the two major times the United States was attacked on its own ground," he said.
Wevodau was chairman of the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy in 1991 when the nation observed the 50th anniversary of the attacks. Wevodau recalls that a good number of Pearl Harbor veterans were on hand at Fort Bliss that day, 50 years after the event.
"At 66 years, probably there aren't as many around today as there were then," he said.
Leonhard also has a personal connection to the attacks – a friend's father was a ship commander at the time of the attacks, and this commander later stood aboard the USS Missouri as Gen. MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender, Sept. 2, 1945.
"As officers and senior enlisted, it is our duty and our inherent responsibility to train, and part of that training is teaching," said Leonhard. "And teaching of American history, how our Soldiers and Sailors have suffered and died before us so that we can be free, is a very, very important part of what we do."
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 07.08.2008 01:05 |
| Story ID: | 21280 |
| Location: | BALAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 522 |
| Downloads: | 427 |
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