The Salt Lake Tribune, Saturday, December 8, 1956 Soft Rain - Not Bombs Peaceful Hawaii Recalls 1941 Attack PEARL HARBOR, Dec. 7 (INS) - Navy men awoke from peaceful sleep aboard warships decked at Pearl Harbor Friday morning to find a soft rain was falling, instead of the hail of death and destruction that struck American’s mid-Pacific islands in the dawn sunshine of Dec. 7, 1941. EXACTLY 15 years since that “day of infamy” when the Japanese sneak attack plummeted the U.S. into World War II, only a handful of naval ships were nestled in the famed Hawaii Harbor. The sight of those few vessels gave mute testimony to the fact the American Navy has well learned the lesson of dispersal, emphasized by the facts of life in the post-war era of atomic and hydrogen weapons. This anniversary of “Pearl Harbor Day” found plenty of American warships strategically scattered over the central and western Pacific, ready not only to combat any enemy attack but also to deliver A-bombs by air and guided missiles with nuclear warheads from the surface of the sea. AT PEARL Harbor and in Honolulu, where memories of the 1941 surprise assault are necessarily more vivid than anywhere else, there was no such thing as a “celebration” of the anniversary, either by the military or the civilian populace. Instead, memorial services were held for the 2,392 Americans who perished under the storm of bombs and aerial torpedoes unleased by the swarming Japanese carrier planes 15 years ago. SIMPLE RITES, marked by the silent raising of the Stars and Stripes, were conducted aboard the partly submerged hulk of the sunken battleship Arizona at Ford Island. Still entombed in the water depths of that hulk lie the bones of 1,102 Navy officers and men who went down with the blasted Man O’War. In Honolulu’s downtown civic center, a short service of prayers for the dead was held at the War Memorial Monument.