Citizens, veterans and town officials will gather Wednesday for memorials to remember the servicemen lost 64 years ago at Pearl Harbor, though logistics appear to be preventing a UB campus event.
Events will be held at nearby Hamburg's town hall at 10 a.m. and at American Legion Post 735 in West Seneca at 12 p.m. for the 64th remembrance of the infamous day when Japanese war planes attacked a U.S. naval base in Hawaii, leaving over 2,000 dead and sparking U.S. involvement in World War II.
James Greenway, president of the Veteran's Fraternity at UB, belongs to the West Seneca district and said he will be attending the memorial. No plans were made by UB's Veteran's Affairs office for a Pearl Harbor remembrance on campus.
A limited staff and budget contributed to the decision, Greenway said.
"There's a small contingent of veterans at UB. There (are) constantly activations and deployments. It's kind of tough to organize anything," he said.
Greenway was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and has been working for the Veterans Affairs office since his return last year.
Plans are underway for a Memorial Day event in May, but Greenway said that the Veteran's Day event in November is often overlooked.
"It's difficult to get students to come to the events," he said.
UB officials planned no college-wide events.
"To my knowledge, UB has not remembered occasions of this type at least in the past 30 years," said Dennis Black, vice president of Student Affairs.
Marty Moot, assistant and former commander at the American Legion Hamburg district, remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor as an 11-year-old boy and recalled his father listening intently to the radio broadcast.
"Pearl Harbor was just in your mind's eye. You had to picture what was going on there," Moot said. "On Sept. 11, we knew so much because it was right there on television."
Moot later entered army training and was stationed at Scoffield Barracks in Hawaii.
"I saw a big cross where Japanese planes were first coming in over land and it really reinforced what happened back there," he said.
Surviving Pearl Harbor veterans George Lasezkey, Richard Liedke and James Terry will be present at the West Seneca ceremony, according to C. Philip Kordos, commander of the Legion West Seneca district.
"They all live in our community," Kordos said. "We have our remembrance at this post every year. We get a good turnout."
Kordos and others say that Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day should be a national holiday, but some people disagree.
"There's already Veteran's Day and Memorial Day," said Brian Boeve, a freshman physics major whose grandfather was a World War II marine.
Pearl Harbor was brought up in recent controversy in the media over making Sept. 11 nationally observed.
"They would have to give federal employees the day off," said Karen Porempski, spokesperson at American Legion county headquarters. "It's always a money issue."
Elyse Skerker, a freshman fine arts major, said if Sept. 11 were ever made a national holiday, "then there should be one for Pearl Harbor, too."
A national veteran remembrance requires declaration by a U.S. president or Congress, but no legislation has been introduced.
"The best way to pay tribute to the tragic events that happened at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 is to honor and care for the 25 million veterans who have served this great nation and to ensure that each of their stories live on, so we may learn from their sacrifices," Congressman Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement.
Higgins said he invites former service members to participate in the Veteran's History Project, which is an effort to collect and preserve testimonies, letters, photographs and journals of war veterans at the Library of Congress.
Photo: Courtesy of SUNY
