Students, Veterans Mark Pearl Harbor Day

Members of Barnegat’s Veterans of Foreign Wars post joined residents and Barnegat High School students, teachers and administrators in a ceremony Wednesday morning commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor.

With readings and speeches, attendees remembered the ambush that pushed American into World War II, but also, in the words of VWF Post 10092 Commander John Rivers, “produced what has been called the greatest generation.”

Members of the high school’s history club – an active group of about 50 students led by teacher Lesley Thomson – joined in reading a timeline of the events of the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when more than 350 Japanese planes attacked U.S. military installations on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, killing 2,402 Americans and wounding more than 1,000.

The involvement of the teens was a key part of keeping alive the memory of the sailors, soldiers and airmen who lost their lives in the attack and in the terrible war that followed, said Barengat Township Committeeman Leonard Morano.

“Let’s make sure these students remember, so they can tell the next generation,” he said.

Thomson agreed. “The biggest thing I try to tell my students is that we really have to preserve this history,” she said when the event ended. “We need to ensure future generations remember.”