It's been almost seven decades, but memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor are as vivid as ever for Judy Weiher.  Living at the Hawaiian Army base where her father was stationed, Weiher at the tender age of 5 felt as if "the whole world was on fire" when the bombs rained from Japanese warplanes, sinking ships, killing thousands and sparking America's military engagement in the Second World War.

"It looked like everything was burning," the retired nurse recalled Sunday during a somber memorial service at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler.  Weiher was one of two Pearl Harbor survivors among the roomful of people, young and old, who came to observe the date that still lives in infamy.

"There was a lot of fire - people crying, sirens going, dead people all over," recounted James M. Sellers, then a 21-year-old Marine whose vessel docked at Pearl Harbor less than a week before the bombing. Amid the chaos, Sellers and his comrades manned anti-aircraft weapons.

"We were hoping they'd come back the next day. We were ready," said Sellers, who later fought in the South Pacific.

The patriotic, reverent ceremony also featured remarks from U.S. Navy Cmdr. Steve Petroff, who drew comparisons between the Japanese strike and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Judy Roddy, whose cousin died aboard the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, read the poem "Voice from the Arizona."  The importance of such observances, organizers said, increases with time.

"It was really one of the most important days in our history, and we hope to carry forth the memory of that to the future," said Gary Johnson of the Savannah Navy League, which co-sponsored the event with the Fleet Reserve Association. "The present generation needs to remember what happened on that day."

A few hours later on Sunday, December 7, 2008, at the Savannah Square Retirement Community in Savannah, several World War II veterans and their families gathered for a dinner and dance to benefit the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum.