''It made me sick,'' said Robert R. Neal, 81, of Milwaukie, a Portland suburb. ''It was a complete surprise. And it makes me think about our motto 'Remember Pearl Harbor: Keep America Alert.'''

Tuesday's terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon reminded many Pearl Harbor survivors of the 1941 Japanese attack on U.S. warships in Hawaii.

Both came without warning, and they were direct attacks on American citizens during peacetime.

''They chose to attack with a Sunday punch, like it was at Pearl. This happened to be a Tuesday punch,'' said Julius A. Finnern, a past president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association who lives in Menomonee Falls, Wis.

''I feel like going to war again. No mercy,'' said Felix Novelli of Southhampton, N.Y., who was in Nashville, Tenn., for a World War II reunion of veterans from the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier.

''We have to pick up the pieces and get together, and try to mend our wounds, but we can't let anyone step all over us anymore. There can be no leniency,'' he said.

In Hawaii on Tuesday, all personnel assigned to ships and submarines at Pearl Harbor were on high alert. The USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials were closed to visitors.

''There's no doubt in my mind this is a day we should remember a long, long time,'' said Neal, who was a signalman on the converted destroyer USS Wasmuth when the Japanese attacked the American fleet on Dec. 7, 1941.

At Pearl Harbor, nearly 2,400 Americans died, all but a few dozen of them military personnel. The deaths in the hijacking and suicide crash of four airliners were still being counted Tuesday, but most of the victims were civilian airline passengers or office workers in the World Trade Center.

One Pearl Harbor survivor, Clark Martin, of Richmond, Va., saw that as an important difference.

''The Japanese were military, and we were military. But in this case it was a sneak attack against civilians,'' said Martin, 85, who was an ensign aboard the battleship USS Pennsylvania in 1941.

''I just hope that the country rebounds from this just as it did after Pearl Harbor,'' said Martin.

''Now it's your generation that is challenged as was mine,'' a somber Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., told his Capitol staffers before letting them go home.

''You're up to it. You've got the courage and commitment to guide our nation out of this terrible tragedy.''