Pearl Harbor attack remembered in local ceremonies

Army Pfc. Merle Berdine sat in the warm Hawaiian sunshine that Sunday morning in December 1941 on the steps of his barracks at Fort Kamehameha. He talked about going home the following May after a one-year rotation at Pearl Harbor.

At 7:55 a.m., Berdine's life and the world changed when the first bomb dropped from a Japanese plane, hitting the United States' Pacific naval fleet. Just two hours later, 2,400 U.S. servicemen were dead, another 1,200 wounded, 21 ships and 300 planes damaged or destroyed, and America was at war.

On Tuesday, 69 years later, the 91-year-old Valparaiso resident represented the few remaining Pearl Harbor survivors in northern Indiana at two ceremonies remembering "a date that will live in infamy."

A frigid wind blew through Highland's Main Square gazebo as the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors Indiana Chapter 2 and the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Indiana Chapter 2 gathered at 10:55 a.m. to honor those who died in the attack and those who lived to fight on during World War II.

Berdine is president of the survivors association.

The ceremony began at 10:55 a.m., the time in Northwest Indiana when the attack began, said James M. Laud Sr., Indiana chairman of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. A 21-gun salute by members of American Legion Post 369 of East Chicago and Post 180 of Highland and the playing of taps by Dean Hunter honored those in the military past and present.

"We watched the planes come in and drop the bombs. There was thick, black smoke," Berdine said. "We had to dig a trench to withstand the rest of the attack. It didn't take us long."

Indiana has lost seven Pearl Harbor survivors just this year, leaving about 60 still living in the state, Laud said. Ten live in northern Indiana, he said.

Berdine was honored again at the annual Pearl Harbor commemoration luncheon hosted by the Hammond Rotary Club at the Purdue University Calumet campus.

Guest speaker Capt. Edward J. Martin of the Chicago area Naval ROTC Consortium recalled the words spoken by Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, who designed the attack: "We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve."

Martin said to Berdine, "You emerged from those fires not as a victim but as a vessel full of that terrible resolve. ... All Americans can never be allowed to forget that eternal vigilance is the price of peace.