Remembering Pearl Harbor

I wonder. Is there ever a time when a tragic event stops eliciting strong emotions and becomes just another historical footnote? If so, how long does that take?

It seems to me that the urgency that used to surround remembering Pearl Harbor has eased somewhat in recent years. Perhaps because so many of the people who actually witnessed it area gone and that strong emotional connection is weakening.

In the not too distant future most of the people who were alive when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor will be dead, and then the remembering will be done by people of my age group, who were born just as the war was ending. Pearl Harbor touched us only in the stories told to us by our fathers and our grandfathers, and I'll admit that the story did not affect me as deeply as the memory affected my father and my grandfather.

The full impact of what happened on December 7, 1941 didn't hit me until I visited the memorial in Pearl Harbor when we took a trip to Hawaii. Actually seeing the place, standing where the Arizona still lies beneath the water, and watching people drop flower petals on the water made it real. Even our daughter, yet another generation removed from the reality, was deeply touched. We stood there, arm and arm, and wept.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

I recent years I have noticed that people don't seem to make such a big deal out of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. It used to be practically a national holiday and news sources would be full of stories about the tragic day, stories that would lead in the news.

Today, while looking at a few online news sources, I did not see lead stories about Pearl Harbor. The tragic mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska, still leads, and I found that disquieting. Here was a young man who killed a lot of people because he was troubled, but also because he thought it would bring him fame. And it has.

But measure the worthiness of that story as compared to the worthiness of remembering what men and women suffered on Dec. 7, 1941.

It would have been fitting for the story about Everett Hyland, who was aboard the USS Pennsylvania on December 7, 1941, to be the top story in publications today. The Pennsylvania was dry-docked that day, so it did not suffer as much damage as some other ships, but Hyland clearly remembers shipmates dying and being injured. Not for fame, but just because they were doing their duty.

He will join some 50 survivors and hundreds more family members and officials at a Pearl Harbor pier overlooking the USS Arizona Memorial to honor the attack's victims.This year, survivors and their family members are dedicating a new memorial for the USS Oklahoma, which lost 429 sailors and Marines -- the second greatest loss of life among any of the battleships in Pearl Harbor.