Homage to a day of infamy

It has been 62 years since Pearl Harbor was attacked, and Americans keep coming back to pay tribute.

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - Woody Derby was just 23, a farm boy from Iowa enjoying his Sunday newspaper, when his life - and the nation - changed forever.

Sixty-two years after that haunting Dec.7 at Pearl Harbor, thoughts of the Japanese attack that killed 2,390 people are not far off for Derby or for a nation that has seen more dismal days, fought in more wars, lost thousands more sons and daughters.

Americans keep coming back to remember.

"Why do you think?" asked Derby, 85. "It's the worst military defeat the U.S. has ever had."

On Dec.7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked American and British territories and possessions in the Pacific, including the home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Hundreds are expected to gather today at the USS Arizona National Memorial to mark the 62nd anniversary of the attack that launched the United States into World War II.

About 1.4-million people visit each year - some paying homage by tossing flowers into the waters above the sunken USS Arizona.

Derby worked in the supply room aboard the USS Nevada when the ship was attacked. He remembers the sounds of the bombing, the gushing water that flooded his ship, the fellow sailors lost.

The crew of the USS O'Kane, who served in the war in Iraq this year, also will honor the Arizona, which lost 1,177 crew members.

"It kind of makes you stop and think about what people have done for us to be free the way we are," said Jan Winn, 62, of Redlands, Calif. "It makes you hope we don't have to go through it again."

Larry Solomon of Lexington, Ky., said he listened during his flight to Hawaii as two young girls discussed Pearl Harbor.

One of the girls shrugged off the trip, saying it was a place where "just a bunch of people got bombed," Solomon recalled. The other, he said, seemed to understand the importance of visiting the site.

"You've got to go," Solomon recalled the girl saying. "You've got to be a part of history."

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