Take a Virtual Punchbowl Visit

I can't think of a better way to remember Pearl Harbor than with a visit to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, otherwise known as the Punchbowl for the shape of the volcanic crater which contains the cemetery.

I can't make a physical trip to the Punchbowl, but did spend some time today on its website reflecting on service and sacrifice.

The cemetery contains the graves of 34,000 veterans of the two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and includes the remains of 70 unknown sailors from the battleship USS Arizona sunk in the Japanese attack 69 years ago today.

You can also find the names of 31 Medal of Honor winners buried there, ranging from Marine Private Erwin Jay Boydston who received nation's highest decoration for his valor in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in Peking to Marine Corporal Larry Leonard Maxam who received his award posthumously for defending his comrades despite severe wounds in a firefight in Vietnam in February 1968.

The Punchbowl also serves as the final resting place for a number of notable Americans including former Sen.Spark Masayuki Matsunaga who served with the legendary Army 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy in World War II, Air Force Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka an astronaut killed in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and Ernie Pyle, killed on April 18, 1945, while covering Army forces on the island of Ie Shimaoff the coast of Okinawa.

Read the names of the Medal of Honor winners and the notable Americans buried at the Punchbowl -- all with the same simple headstone -- out loud and you will sing a song of America.