Solemn words and patriotic music marked a UA ceremony Sunday to commemorate the anniversary of the USS Arizona's Dec. 7, 1941, demise.

At the University of Arizona, more than 100 people, many of them veterans or Boy Scouts, listened to speeches and poems chronicling the heroics of the 1,177 crew members who died with the sinking of the battleship in Hawaiian waters.

Thursday will mark 65 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into World War II.

Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Meshel, of the Navy Operational Support Center in Tucson, compared the Japanese bombing to the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago in New York, in the District of Columbia and over Pennsylvania.

Both the 1941 and the 2001 attacks set into motion events that would drastically alter the course of the nation, he said.

Meshel noted that he has been to the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor and Ground Zero in New York City.

"The solemn contemplation you find at both locations is interchangeable, the mood is virtually identical, and many of the messages repeated," he said.

Meshel said that when he gazes at a painting of the sunken ship in his office, "I see not only a watery tomb of heroic men but also the settling dust and clearing smoke as our nation rebuilds. I see the catalyst of our nation's will."

UA President Robert Shelton said the university will make sure those who went down with the battleship are not forgotten.

"We are committed to upholding the memory of the Arizona and her crew as a living example of the price liberty sometimes exacts on us to ensure that it does not slip away," Shelton said.

The memory of the Pearl Harbor casualties must be preserved for the benefit of young people, said Jack Culp, a veteran of the Navy and Marines.

Added Staff Sgt. Gregory Ybarra, who played the trumpet with Fort Huachuca's 36th Army Band: "It's important that we don't forget what happened in the past, because if we do, we're doomed to fall into the same traps again."