The generation that fought World War II can tell exactly where they were when the earth-shaking news came that Japan had attacked U.S. warships at Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

"I was in the family car, going to church," 93-year-old Virgil Wiley said Friday at the Center for American Values. He nodded at the memory. "We knew then we were at war. Everybody wanted to enlist the next day."

The Elson family was visiting friends in Canon City that Sunday and a teen-aged Bruce Elson, now 95, was with his brother, horsing around along the Arkansas River.

"Then we walked back to the house and were stunned to hear everybody talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor," Elson recalled.

Ken Carter was just 14 years old and was on the family farm, talking with a friend from school. The radio brought the news that America had been attacked, battleships sunk and sailors killed in Hawaii.

"I looked at my buddy and said, 'I know what we're going to be doing for the next few years' and he just agreed with me," Carter said. "The only question was which one of us would join up first."

They are called the Greatest Generation and there are fewer of them every day. More than 16 million American men and women went into service during World War II. Like the three Pueblo veterans who spoke to an audience of Denver students Friday, those left are all in their 90s or older.

"I'm the baby of the bunch," 91-year-old Carter told the crowd and got the expected laugh.

Friday's event was to honor 35 students from Cherry Creek Schools who were nominated for their patriotism, character and service to others. For the past eight years, the Cherry Creek district has taken part in the center's outreach to young people.

"It's an honor to stand before you," Elson told the students, who ranged from elementary to high school. On the walls of the center are the portrait photographs of more than 100 Medal of Honor recipients and Elson said they made a person humble to look at, even for combat veterans like himself. An Army infantryman, he fought in the Philippines before being stationed in Japan after the surrender in September 1945.

"The real heroes of the war were all the boys who didn't come home," Elson told the audience, adding that his two best friends as a boy in Pueblo were both killed in the war.

Elson credited his long life to clean living, although he confessed that during the war, almost every American soldier, Marine or sailor smoked cigarettes.

"When I came home, my wife told me she wasn't going to kiss me anymore unless I quit smoking," he said. "So you know I quit."

Pearl Harbor sent Wiley into the Army Air Corps as a crew member on a B-24 bomber flying missions in Europe — a very dangerous line of work.

"But I got through it okay, except that I have hearing trouble today," he told the students and then quipped, "Of course, I'm going to turn 94 in a month and that might have something to do with it."

Carter had to wait until he was 16 to enlist in the Navy, with his parents' approval. He had a brother in the Army fighting in Europe, so he joined the Navy and headed for the Pacific.

"I was trained to drive a landing craft for the invasion of Japan," he explained. "On my boat, I'd be carrying ammunition and gasoline. So you can guess what my chances of survival were going to be."

Pearl Harbor pushed the U.S. into World War II, but all three men made a point of talking about the end of the war that came when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Elson even visited Hiroshima in the months afterwards and saw the devastation first-hand.

He's spoken to many Pueblo audiences over the years about seeing the blackened ruins of a city that looked as if it had been smashed off the face of the earth.

"If we hadn't done it (dropped the bomb) I don't think I'd be here today," Wiley said soberly and both Elson and Carter nodded.

proper@chieftain.com