Why So Few Remain
A friend of mine asked yesterday why there was such a lack of remembrance for Pearl Harbor. He added the following throwaway line: will my grandkids shrug on the anniversary of 9/11 fifty or sixty years hence?
My answer is pretty simple. You can catch the clue bus by checking out this photo: there just aren’t that many people left alive to carry the flame of remembrance forward.
As you all know, I write about Armistice Day and my World War One veteran friend every November 11. And WWI was by far a much more cataclysmic experience for the world than was Pearl Harbor. The only reason images and stories of the trenches are alive in my mind is because I know someone who experienced them first hand. How many people are left out there who were alive on that infamous day in December many decades ago?
And yes, in fifty years not many people will remember with any real emotion that morning of glorious blue-sky potential turned tragic in New York City and Washington, DC.
That’s just the way history works: inexorable, somnolent and forgetful.