A little over 2 years ago I walked into a clinic to pick up some medication. You know, cause I have back pain. While I was waiting in the lobby for them to call me up for my meds, a man wheels his way towards me in his electric wheelchair. His face was scared up pretty bad, over his cheeks and both of his eyes. His body feeble. He came up to me and told me about sitting in his rack in the harbor, waiting for his friends to bring him his rations from the mess hall. He hears a crash. A loud explosion. Next thing he knows he is knee deep in water and trying to swim to safety. He makes it to the deck to man his station because he already knows he's under attack by an unknown enemy. He's in the AA guns shooting at anything that's in the air. Then he looks over, see's a suicide bomber hit the control tower, then the side of the hull explodes as its also hit by a torpedo. The deck collapses and swallows most of the crew including himself. Him and a handful of survivors were the only people to make it out alive from that ship (about 200 men). He never saw his friends return from the mess hall. He grabbed my hand the best he could, and told me, "Thank you, thank you for doing the job nobody else wants to do. For risking the sacrifices the rest of us made to be here today."

Today is not a happy holiday, it's not something that's celebrated. This was an attack on American soil against us as a country, an act of war. The deaths resulting of this attack stack almost as high as the attacks of 9/11. Today is another memorial day to remember the ones we lost, and a moment to pay our respects to the fallen. This is a true story and it happened to me at the McClellan Satellite Clinic. Never forget.

I had to get this out, it seems some people are oblivious to how bad Pearl Harbor really was.