Vets of WWII and 9-11 Make Pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor NewsMax.com Wires Friday, Dec. 7, 2001 HONOLULU

Veterans of the two most infamous sneak attacks in U.S. history met in Hawaii this week to exchange respects from one generation to another. Two groups of New York City police officers and firefighters who were at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 visited the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor on Tuesday and Wednesday to pay their respects to the survivors and those killed in the Japanese attack on the Navy base 60 years ago today. "So many times, we've heard what we went through was called the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century. So to be here and see what these men went through and to actually meet some of them, it's a privilege," Thomas Rowe, a 41-year-old police officer, told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Twenty-three NYPD officers died on Sept. 11 when the Twin Towers collapsed, including 14 from the elite Emergency Services Unit that Rowe belongs to. Rowe was among 600 emergency personnel, family members and survivors of Sept. 11 terrorist attack who were treated by state officials to an all-expenses paid trip to the idyllic islands for some well-deserved rest at a time when Hawaii's tourist industry has been reeling from a post-Sept. 11 decline. Like many other visitors, Rowe called the visit to Pearl Harbor the highlight of the trip. "It's humbling to be here," he said. The early-morning attack on Pearl Harbor and other Hawaiian military installations in 1941 left 2,403 Americans dead, including 54 civilians. The death toll in the destruction of the battleship Arizona alone was 1,177. The World Trade Center disaster left an estimated 3,152 dead. A group of Pearl Harbor vets, many wearing their trademark white slacks and colorful Hawaiian aloha shirts, said they felt a sense of awe meeting up with the New Yorkers. "I'm proud of you guys, real proud," 80-year-old Hank Freitas of Walnut Creek, Calif., told Rowe. "I am honored to meet these people," the Navy veteran, who was aboard the USS Tangier on Dec. 7, 1941, told the newspaper. "It's a sad thing they've gone through, a great loss. If anybody can understand, we can." Like Pearl Harbor, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon launched the United States into a war and have become a symbol of U.S. resolve in times of peril. Many of the New York visitors said they hoped the World Trade Center site would become a memorial in much the same way the wreck for the Arizona has been preserved. "It truly is sacred ground, just like the World Trade Center is now," said Laura Sheppard, 33, whose father, FDNY Battalion Chief Dennis Cross, was killed on Sept. 11. "Those [Pearl Harbor] heroes have not been forgotten. I hope New York does that, preserves part of the [WTC site] as a memorial forever." Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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