Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Pearl Harbor 70 years on

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It might be appropriate to pause in your holiday activities and think of the thousands men and women at Ground Zero in 1941, as well as the millions who took on the fight against fascism.

In this past year the final known living soldiers of World War I died, and the survivors of Pearl Harbor are also dying off. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association holds its last gathering today; then it will disband. Its members are too old and frail to travel to meeting places.

These days we know what it’s like to wake up one beautiful, clear day and discover your world crashing down without warning. For our generation it was buildings collapsing, not battleships sinking.

The Pearl Harbor generation has carried these memories for 70 years. I hope many were able to transmit them—to families or historians—so that they are not lost to the future.




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