A Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremony was held Wednesday afternoon at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The event, hosted by Friends of the National World War II Memorial and the National Park Service, paid tribute to the lives lost on that day 81 years ago.
The program was streamed live at 12:53 p.m.
As part of the commemoration, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley delivered the keynote address and will accompany World War II Veterans as they placed wreaths at the Freedom Wall.
On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan launched a surprise military attack on the United States at the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, taking the lives of 2,403 Americans and catapulting the United States into the deadliest conflict in human history.
Over the course of 24 hours, Imperial Japan would also launch attacks on Midway, Wake Island, Guam, The Philippines, Malaya (now Malaysia), Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doesn't have statistics for how many Pearl Harbor survivors are still living. But department data show that of the 16 million who served in World War II, only about 240,000 were alive as of August and some 230 die each day.
There were about 87,000 military personnel on Oahu at the time of the attack, according to a rough estimate compiled by military historian J. Michael Wenger.
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Associated Press contributed to this story.