There are fewer and fewer veterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to remember Dec. 7, 1941 – a day which President Franklin D. Roosevelt correctly predicted would live in infamy. There were about 60,000 military personnel on the island during the Japanese attack. Today, only about 3,000 survive.
The dwindling number is no excuse for Americans to forget what occurred that day. The pivotal event in U.S. history should be remembered long after those who experienced it first-hand are unable to remind us of its significance.
There will be ceremonies at Pearl Harbor today to honor the nearly 3,500 Americans killed in the attack. Only about 100 survivors are expected to attend the ceremonies and the concomitant annual convention of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association in Honolulu. There will be similar rites elsewhere, part of the welcome effort to recall and preserve history.
A class of 40 students from Soddy-Daisy High School, for example, is in Hawaii today for the 69th anniversary of the attack. The group will videotape interviews with survivors. It’s part of an ambitious project to create a documentary that teacher and students want to complete in coming months, and then present to the National Park Service in Hawaii next year on the 70th anniversary. It is a generational act of remembrance well worth undertaking.
The Soddy-Daisy High and similar projects as well as rites at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere today honor both the living and the dead. They are a reminder of the great deeds accomplished at high cost by the rightly called Greatest Generation. Those men and women put aside political, cultural and social differences and changed the world through incredible sacrifice and acts of bravery extolled to this day.