Five years ago my family and I took our first trip to Hawaii. It had been my desire, since learning more about my Uncle Pete, to visit his grave in the Punchbowl Cemetery on the island of Oahu.
As we walked along the rows of grave stones, looking for the one belonging to my Uncle, we passed many, many markers like this one.
Some of these stones even marked the spot of several “unknowns.”
As we later visited the USS Arizona Memorial, and saw the columns of names of the men lost that day, I couldn't help thinking that some of those names matched some of those “unknowns” we ‘d seen at Punchbowl.
For their sake, and the sake of their loved ones-who never had an actual place to say their goodbyes-I’ll remember Pearl Harbor.
