Pearl Harbor survivors and their families today attended the 63rd commemoration of the attack along with more than 150 military members, veterans and guests on the USS Arizona Memorial. Photos by Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

World War II survivor Yuell Chandler, 86, remembers a Japanese aircraft crashing nearby, killing three to four men on a loading dock of Pearl Harbor.

A moment of silence at 7:55 a.m. — the moment the attack began — was punctuated today by four F-15 fighters soaring above the open-topped memorial in a missing-man formation.

A moment of silence at 7:55 a.m. — the moment the attack began — was punctuated by four F-15 fighters soaring above the open topped memorial in a missing-man formation.

The destroyer USS Chung-Hoon passed in review, veterans dropped flowers into the well of the memorial for those lost and echo Taps was played by a 19-piece band.

It was fighters and bombers of a different sort that came winging in on that morning, raining death on a Sunday in Hawai'i and launching the United States into World War II.

Sixy-three years later, it is still an emotional journey for survivors like Marvin Kaufmann, 83, who lives near Vancouver, Wash.

Kaufmann was aboard the USS Whitney, a destroyer repair ship off Ford Island.

"I watched the whole thing," he said. "I watched the Arizona explode. I happened to look over there and there were three gigantic explosions."

Kaufmann had sailed over on the Arizona from California, and on a previous visit to the memorial, he noticed the names of the 14-member band that had entertained the troops from California.

"I looked up and saw all those guys' names and they were such good musicians and every one of them is down here," he said, gesturing to the rusted hulk below. "I have to swallow a little bit."

Yuell Chandler, now 86, was a sergeant in the Army at Fort Kamehameha at the mouth of Pearl Harbor. The Royal Kunia man remembers a Japanese aircraft crashing nearby, killing three to four men on a the dock.

After all these years, Chandler said the emotion is still there.

"I've tried my damnedest to forget it," he said. "I saw all these guys piled up like cordwood, being shipped in coffins."

Five battleships and three other ships were sunk or beached and 13 other ships were damaged. More than 2,000 sailors lost their lives in the attack, along with several hundred other service members and civilians.

Vice Adm. Gary Roughead, deputy commander of U.S. Pacific Command, the keynote speaker, drew comparisons between the aging fighting men of a bygone era and the young soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

"The intrepid spirit and tenacity of heart displayed that December day is deeply ingrained in today's forces who even as we speak fight to bring liberty and freedom to people deserving and thirsting for just that," Roughead said.

Ansil L. Saunders, 86, from Wahiawa makes the trip to either the Arizona Memorial or the Visitors Center every Dec. 7. On that date in 1941, he was in the Navy at the Aiea Landing.

"We had a birds-eye-view of all of battleship row," he said. "We were so busy we didn't have much time to worry about anybody else."

He said he had a lot of mixed feelings when the smoke lifted after the attack.

"I was angry, but right at the time I didn't know who to be angry at," Saunders said.

He never held a grudge against the Japanese people.

"It wasn't the Japanese people per se. It was their military — those are the ones I got mad at, not the people themselves," Saunders said.

He comes out every year because he feels a sense of obligation to the shipmates who aren't here anymore.

Louis W. Nockold, 82, came in from Newport Beach, Calif., with his wife, daughter and a friend for the service. On Dec. 7, 1941, he was on the USS Honolulu, a light cruiser tied up in the shipyard. A bomb exploded on the pier next to the ship but no one was killed.

He, too, is a survivor and like a lot of the other aging vets in more ways than one.

Estimates are that more than 1,100 World War II veterans die each month. The last year has brought a host of health problems for Nockold, that led to the loss of his leg.

"I just feel so damned fortunate to be here," Nockold said from a wheelchair. "I just feel good that I was able to make it one more time."