The USS Cassin Young in Charlestown Navy Yard. (Facebook.com/USS Cassin Young Volunteers)
CHARLESTOWN (WBZ-AM) -- Federal parks and veterans officials will lay a commemorative wreath next to the USS Cassin Young at the Charlestown Navy Yard Friday to mark 77 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The USS Cassin Young was named for a commander who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during the attack on December 7, 1941.
Michael Creasey, Superintendent at National Parks of Boston, talked to WBZ NewsRadio's Bill Marcus that the rememberance ceremony will take place in the same naval yard where many of the destroyers that ended up fighting and winning the war were built.
"There was over 16 million people that fought in that war, and there's less than 600,000 people, survivors, remaining today," Creasey said.
The attack left 2,400 dead and launched the United States into the Second World War. The attack wiped out the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and was coordinated with Japanese attacks throughout Asia on western colonial holdings in Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Phillipines, Guam, and Wake Island.
"Pearl Harbor Day was just one of these incredible events in American history that has true meaning in terms of what we as a country and a nation were confronted with in that time," Creasey said.
Today's ceremony will also remember President George H.W. Bush, who died this week at age 94. He was an aviator in the war.
WBZ NewsRadio's Bill Marcus (@BillinChina) reports