Years after he accompanied his father, a Pearl Harbor veteran, back to the scene of the 7 December 1941 attack, the author fulfilled the final solemn wishes of deceased USS Arizona survivors by interring their remains in the sunken battleship.
When I was 12 years old, during the 25th anniversary year of the "date that will live in infamy," my father, Val Adams Jr., took me to Pearl Harbor. Dad was a Pearl Harbor survivor; he had been a Navy radioman third class at the time of the attack. Early on 7 December 1941 he was precariously perched 160 feet above the center of Naval Station Pearl Harbor. On duty on top of the station's signal tower, he had a ringside seat for the Japanese attack. Our trip was his first return to Pearl Harbor since the end of World War II. For me, it was the first of many experiences there.
