I was born in 1948, one of the first wave of what was originally called the Baby Boom, and today is generally reduced to “Boomer.” Well, often some epithet or other is attached at the front.
A feature of growing up in the nineteen fifties and early sixties was the ubiquitous observance of this day. Our parents after all were launched into a terrible war at this moment. Of course, for those who analyze such, this was more a marker of something that had been underway for a while. And which would play out in many directions. (I find myself thinking of innocent Americans who were also launched into an era of fear and for more than a hundred thousand, concentration camps because they were of Japanese decent. And, a stark reminder for those concerned for the safety of the American Muslim population today…) So complex. There are in fact few clear lines before when something, after which something else. The bleeding both ways is part of the mystery of causality.
But, we need markers. And this was a clear one. At 7:48 in the morning Hawaiian time on the 7th of December in 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a preemptive attack on the United States Pacific Fleet, much of which was moored there in Pearl Harbor. All eight American battleships were damaged, four of them sunk, three cruisers, three destroyers, a minelayer, and an anti-aircraft ship were all damaged or sunk. Twenty-four hundred Americans were killed, and another eleven hundred wounded.
The following day the American congress declared war on Japan.
And, as I said, this was my parents’ war. Between this and the Great Depression which preceded it, these were the great external events of their lives.
So, parades, speeches. That day which shall live in infamy. All became ubiquitous part of my childhood.
Pretty much gone now. There’s a moment at Pearl Harbor itself. Here and there some observances. But truthfully the event has passed from living memory for many to a historic event. Japan after all is our most secure ally in the western Pacific. Our cultural and economic ties are strong. The combatants and their immediate loved ones, those alive are in their increasingly late eighties or nineties. So, a natural enough thing.
But, also, for me as the intermediate generation from those embroiled in that war to the young adults for whom the event didn’t even take place in the century that they consider home, well…
Time.
Memory.
Mutable and ever changing.
So obvious. And.
Such a mystery…
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