Los Angeles: Historians and survivors of Japan's surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 are using the latest online technology to preserve their memories of the day that drew the United States into World War II.
The Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund on Friday unveiled its Pearl Harbor Survivor Project Web Site (www.pearlharborstories.org) that includes photos, written stories and video clips of survivors of the raid in which about 3,000 were killed or wounded.
The site aims to find living survivors of the air and sea attack, who come from a time when people didn't often share their war experiences, by using social networking technology to cast a wide net.
It will also use podcasting to turn telephone contributions into sound files. Survivors, as well as their friends and families, are also invited to upload copies of photos, letters and other mementos.
The site's creators say it will serve as a repository and tribute to the survivors and they hope it will tell the story of Pearl Harbor in a way that members of the MySpace generation can understand.
Contributor Ansil Saunders was in the Navy when warships, aircraft carriers and airstrips on and around the Hawaiian Island of Oahu came under siege.
"There was explosions coming from all over - you know, different areas," Saunders said in his video. The serviceman, who died earlier this year at the age of 87, also helped recover bodies from sunken battleships, which included the USS Oklahoma and the USS Arizona.
Saunders described stacks of coffins as well as a single image that still burned in his memory: "They had brought a sailor in off one of the ships that they had just cut out of the bottom. He was just plumb white ... I remember seeing him."
The passing of Saunders and others of his generation has imbued the project with a sense of urgency, said Daniel Martinez, chief historian at the USS Arizona Memorial Park.
He added that the National Park Service has already collected 450 videotaped survivor interviews and that he hopes the project will push that number much higher.
"We have a dwindling resource of witnesses to one of the darkest days in American history," said Martinez, who added that the website will become part of a museum being planned for the park's visitor center.
Alby Saunders, Ansil Saunders' 45-year-old son, said the project "gives me and others like me a forum to tell Dad's story and to thank him for what he did for America that day."
Dick Rodby's family lived in a big house near Schofield Barracks and he was just 11-years-old when the Japanese began their attack. "The house started to shake and we realised something was going on .... My father was asleep, but then when we woke him up he said, 'Well, they finally came,'" Rodby said in his video testimony.
Herb Weatherwax was on a bus from Honolulu with other troops when he first saw the destruction wrought by the Imperial Japanese Army. "As I passed by the Arizona right at the entrance of the bay, I looked out and I was just shocked to see such a huge ship just enveloped in flames. The flames were so huge," he said.
"The Oklahoma had been already torpedoed and she flipped over on her side. I remember seeing little objects scrambling on the hull of the Oklahoma. Those are the things that left a tremendous impression on my mind," he said.
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