This was in the Record Searchlight and is a great article...Lest we Forget.

A dying tradition for veterans

7 in Shasta County remain who served during Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor

By Jim Schultz (Contact)
Saturday, December 6, 2008


Their ranks are thinning with each passing year. But survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are gathering at 9 a.m. Sunday outside the Shasta County Courthouse in Redding to remember the 67th anniversary of that “day of infamy."

“I figure if we get five, we will be lucky," said 86-year-old Mike Sotak of Happy Valley, who served on the USS Maryland at Pearl Harbor during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.

Once 67 members strong, today Shasta County’s Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter 28 has seven active members left. “It’s a time in history that’s passing very quickly," said Don Crandell of Redding, the chapter’s secretary and the son of a Pearl Harbor survivor.

It’s been estimated that 18,000 to 20,000 veterans survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. And although it’s not known how many of them are still alive, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association has a nationwide active membership of about 5,000, about 800 fewer than it had only a few years ago.

Crandell, whose father was captain of the USS Gamble at Pearl Harbor, was an eighthgrader living with his family in a beach house on Oahu when he saw the Japanese planes fly over on their way to attack Battleship Row 67 years ago Sunday.

Crandell, who’s 80 himself and attempted a few years ago to begin a local chapter of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors with little success, says that the days of the Pearl Harbor survivors chapter also may soon be numbered because of its declining membership.

“When it gets down to six we’re supposed to lose our charter," he said. Crandell, who helped to organize the ceremony, says it should be a simple and relatively short affair.

“I can’t imagine there are going to be many people there," because it falls on a Sunday morning, he said. The ceremony will feature a Veterans of Foreign Wars honor guard, a rifle salute, a bugler, and a few prayers and short speeches.

Then, of course, there will be those men who were present during a crucial turning point in world history.

The chapter’s president, Hank Reynolds of Red Bluff, who served on the USS Detroit, will miss Sunday’s ceremony because he is attending the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association’s reunion in Fredericksburg, Texas.

But those local chapter members expected to attend are Sotak, Van Harrison of Redding, who served on the USS Tennessee; Melvin Fisher of Jones Valley, who served on the USS Whitney; Richard Lamb of Redding, who served on the USS Curtis; Robert McCullough of Red Bluff, who served on the USS Medusa; and Wayne Stamper of Redding, who served on the USS St. Louis. Crandell is the master of ceremonies.