• What: Pearl Harbor Anniversary Memorial Service.
• When: 9:30 a.m. Sunday.
• Where: Vancouver VA campus, 1601 E. Fourth Plain Blvd., gymnasium building (near the Vietnam Memorial).
Two men who jumped into action when the United States was launched into World War II are scheduled to speak at this year’s Pearl Harbor observance.
The 73rd annual event will be at 9:30 a.m. Sunday at Vancouver’s Veterans Affairs campus.
The ceremony salutes about 2,390 Americans who were killed when the Japanese warplanes and submarines attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.
The Pacific Northwest Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors are organizers of the program.
The observance will be in the VA campus gymnasium building; the gym is west of the county’s public health building, near the Vietnam Memorial that includes a helicopter on display.
There are still eight or so Pearl Harbor veterans living in the area. Two of them will be part of the event — keynote speaker Ralph Laedtke and Paul Johnson.
Laedtke was a pharmacist’s mate/medical records technician on a hospital ship, the USS Solace.
Johnson was a crewman on the USS Castor, a transport ship loaded with ammunition. It had just arrived at Pearl Harbor two days earlier and wasn’t on the attackers’ list of targets.
Clay Keown, a historian who is a member of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors group, will provide a historical framework for the two veterans’ first-person accounts.
