PEARL HARBOR — The front row of seats at Kilo Pier was full of grandfatherly men with canes, walkers and white hair.

But their caps, embroidered with ship names such as Oklahoma, Utah, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Arizona, told a different story — one of terrible trial by fire in their youth, when they, and the nation, were suddenly thrown into war.

Art Herriford, now 87, had a bird's eye view of the horror of Dec. 7, 1941, from his battle station 65 feet above the water on the light cruiser USS Detroit in Pearl Harbor.

"Some things are embedded in my memory that I'll never forget," the Sherman Oaks, Calif., man said yesterday.

One of those is staring at the battleship Arizona when it exploded.

Another is seeing men's bodies flung five times as high as a battleship deck every time a torpedo exploded with concussive force against a ship's side.

About 2,000 people and 55 Pearl Harbor survivors attended yesterday morning's 68th anniversary observance of the attack that thrust America into World War II.

The ceremony at the pier — with a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., when the Japanese attack began — saw survivors place wreaths for the ships that took the heaviest casualties, most along Battleship Row. The pier is across from the USS Arizona Memorial.

Louis Conter was on the Arizona when a 1,760-pound, armor-piercing bomb slammed through its decks and ignited the forward ammunition magazines, causing a huge explosion.

"We blew up in 13 minutes. Didn't have too much time," said Conter, now 88, who lives in Grass Valley, Calif.

The bow of the battleship rose 30 feet out of the water, he said.

A total of 1,177 sailors and Marines were killed on the Arizona — nearly half of all of the casualties suffered in the attack. More than 900 shipmates remain in the sunken hull.

"Every time we go aboard that (memorial), it's hard. Tears come to your eyes," said Conter, who was stationed on the ship in the spot where the memorial is built across the hull.

The aging survivors received a spontaneous standing ovation as they completed the wreath-laying ceremony for nine of the ships that were struck.

The cruiser USS Lake Erie conducted a pass in review, four F-15 fighter jets from the Hawai'i Air National Guard performed a "missing man flyover," a Marine rifle team fired a salute and echo taps was played.

Survivors later placed wreaths and flowers at the Arizona Memorial, and a remembrance ceremony was held on Ford Island at the memorial to the 429 men who died on the USS Oklahoma.

At dawn on Dec. 7 1941, more than half of the U.S Pacific Fleet, approximately 150 vessels, lay at anchor or near piers in Pearl Harbor, according to the National Park Service, which administers the USS Arizona Memorial.

The Japanese aerial fleet caught the U.S. by surprise, and in two waves of attack, 21 vessels were sunk or damaged. Smoke from burning planes and hangers filled the sky.

Airfields across O'ahu also were hit, and by 10 a.m., 2,390 Americans — including 49 civilians — had been killed.

On the 68th anniversary of the attack, the National Park Service focused not only on the Pearl Harbor losses but on the wider war in the Pacific.

Japan wanted to paralyze the U.S. Pacific Fleet so it wouldn't interrupt Japan's invasion of the western Pacific and Asia, including China.

Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto is questionably quoted as saying after Pearl Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Allan Millett, the director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, and the keynote speaker, yesterday said "that sleeping giant had awakened after the fall of France in the summer of 1940."

"The war with Japan was not just about China, but also the use of the Asian colonies of our European allies to support the war with the Axis (powers)," Millett said.

The National Park Service also introduced a greater candor about the war, with officials saying that the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans represented racial prejudice, war hysteria and the failure of political leadership.

A passage from one of Millett's books, "A War to be Won," also was read, noting that in its invasion of China in 1937, the Japanese "embarked on a war that involved murder, rape and devastation to a degree not seen since the Mongol conquest of the early 13th century."