Blogfinger

Pearl Harbor Day in Ocean Grove, NJ.  Pictured is the Neptune H.S. Junior ROTC Color Guard.  Left click for full view.   Photo by Jane Killilea (OG)

By Mary Walton

In years past, the annual Pearl Harbor Day remembrance has been staged on the western tip of the Ocean Grove fishing pier. After a brief ceremony, a wreath is passed to a police launch, from which it is cast out to sea.

Last year, thanks to Hurricane Irene, “We had only half a pier, so we had to do it on the east side,” said Ocean Grove Fishing Club president Al Dawson, a Korean War veteran. The boat played its customary role.

This year, there was no pier. The fragmented section that remains after Hurricane Sandy’s blitz is cordoned off by the orange netting used to signal danger. No pier, so no boat. It didn’t make sense to have a boat when no one could walk out on the pier, because “you wouldn’t be able to see it,” Dawson said.

But it takes more than a couple of hurricanes to derail a longstanding ceremony commemorating the infamous day when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and triggered the United States’ entry into World War II. On Friday a small crowd of dedicated observers gathered in light rain for a prayer and a speech, a rifle volley and a moving rendition of Taps by Harry Eichhorn and Ed Wyzykowsky on trumpets.

The rain and the change in location, compounded by a newspaper notice in which the time was misstated by half an hour, made for a situation that “was confusing,” Dawson said. He held out hope that next year the ceremony can return to a rebuilt pier.

SOUNDTRACK.  From the album “World War II Radio Hits” Frances Langford sings “As Time Goes By”: