I remember when I was a youngin’ reading Reader’s Digest, Boy’s Life and the Grit newspaper of the articles about the stories surviving Civil War vets.
At the time there were many WW1 vets still around, intermingling socially with the seemingly every other male who was a WW2 vet interacting in one form or another in every day life of the period with the growing Baby Boomer generation. A Pearl survivor was an unmentioned walking hero. Lt. Ted Larson’s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was my favorite third grade read on the limited number of shelves in my new, small, single-room grade school library at the time.
Time, of course, will and has inevitably moved on. Memories have been lost, and history condensed to foot note bits and pieces here and there.
The WW1 vets have now gone the way of the Civil War vets and are a fading memory for most Baby Boomers and irrelevant history for follow on succeeding generations.
Ted Lawson passed away in ’92 with little notice, and there have been no remaining Doolittle Raiders vets alive for several years now. Doolittle, a dare devil of his day before serving, passed in ’93. Pearl Harbor survivors are seemingly now literally a dwindling minuscule, fragile, aged commodity, approaching the status of a historical note on a web site with a little over 2,000 remaining and passing quickly.
When I served, I lived on Hickam Air Field, immediately bordering the Pearl Harbor naval base with the growing family for a couple years. If nothing else every early December I get a call from one of the daughter’s sharing her memory of my taking them around the neighborhoods on both bases, riding our bikes in the trade winds to search out, count, and run our fingers over the bullet holes in the concrete walls of the buildings on base remaining intentionally un-repaired from that Japanese early Sunday morning sneak attack.
“I clearly remember you saying at the time it doesn’t mean much at all to us today, but when we grew up and had our own kids it will mean a lot more, especially so when they approach their late teenage years”. This was the week of receiving the annual calls reminding me of those days which are now quickly sneaking up on a half century ago.
I got a call from a younger acquaintance yesterday asking if I might why the flag was half mast. When I answered it was for the Pearl Harbor survivors, it was, “Really? We do that?”
Time, of course, inevitably moves on.
Memories will shrink, fade, and move on with the passing of time. The likes of the Kardashians now dominate what seems to pass for self-entitled history.
I have a cherished, faded copy of the very same thrird grade Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo book on the shelf of my hard copy library today. I'm wondering what will eventually become of it in this digital, short term history, instant entertainment and gratification, 'smart' media age.
Not sure if “interesting” is the term describing watching history moving on. At least I and my daughters have a living memory of the distinctive odor of the bunker fuel oil which still seeps from the USS Arizona today and that filled the nostrils of and covered the in-the-water survivors that fateful tropical morning an eternity ago. Whodda thunk the stink of bunker fuel oil would end up meaning anything to anybody historically?
But, then who even knows these days the stench of bunker fuel oil directly leads to 30 brief seconds over where Sony headquarters will spring up and a faded book on aging old man's bookshelf.
Time is like that. Digital time is a completely new cosmos.
