Author: Martha Groves
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 8, 2001
Franklin Delano Roosevelt called
it a "date which will five in infamy", words that resonate even now for
those who remember the bombing of Pearl Harbour 60 years ago.
But with those ranks rapidly dwindling,
and with the grim events of Sept. 11 now seared into the consciousness
of a new generation, many survivors of the Japanese attack are wondering:
After they're gone, will Dec. 7, 1941, also be a date that will live in
memory?
Herbert Franck's recall of that
sunny day on Oahu is as vivid as if, he were still a 22-year-old aviation
machinist mate first class. Franck was finishing breakfast when he detected
the rumble of unfamiliar engines overhead. He and his navy buddies rushed
out of the mess hall to see bombs hurtling down.
"I was very frustrated. I didn't
have any guns," said Franck, now 82. "The only thing I had in my hand was
a breakfast roll, which, I threw at the airplane."
The Coronado resident joined hundreds
of fellow members of the Pearl Harbour Survivors Assn. in Hawaii on Friday.
Like others who endured the event that changed the world, he has made it
part of his life's mission to keep the date alive.
It can be a discouraging task, Franck
said, relating a conversation he had recently with a high school senior.
"Do you know Pearl Harbour?" Franck asked the boy.
"No, who's she?"
Now comes Sept. 11, a new generation's
date of infamy, the date of the first significant attack on the U.S. mainland
by an outside enemy since the War of 1812.
As for whether Sept. 11 will continue
to stir hearts 60 years from now, two camps are emerging. One contends
that the aftermath of Sept. 11 will not transform society as dramatically
as did Dec. 7, 1941.
The other suggests that the date
will endure. There is the magnitude of the Sept. 11 terrorist assault:
an estimated 3,300 people killed, an economy wounded. That compares with
the 2,400 or so who died at Pearl Harbour.
Moreover, "Sept. 11" has become
synonymous with the event, and the label is often rendered more cryptically
as 911, which also happens to be the national SOS code.
Joseph B. Hellige, a USC psychology
professor and specialist in memory, said he could foresee when a chapter
in a history textbook would be titled 'Sept. 11, 2001' akin to 'The Bombing
of Pearl Harbour'.
"I suspect that that date will be
remembered far better and far longer and by more subsequent generations
than all the other dates," Mr Hellige said. "Nobody ever referred to Pearl
Harbour as Dec. 7. We never referred to the Kennedy assassination as Nov.
22."
For each generation, there is a
date that becomes etched, seemingly indelibly, in the memory of everyone
old enough to be aware. In the 1980s, it was the Challenger space shuttle
explosion on Jan. 28, 1986.
But with the passage of time, even
destiny-altering dates have a habit of sliding away as the shock subsides
and people reflect on the events' significance.
In earlier times, most youngsters
could rattle off when the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam were fought
and the day Abraham Lincoln was shot - dates that have faded into the footnotes
of history for all but a few exacting students.
July 4th retains its power, of course,
but some holidays intended to commemorate significant events are celebrated
more as three-day weekends. Even the names have changed. Students of World
War I may recall that Veterans Day was once Armistice Day, but who remembers
that Memorial Day was once observed as Decoration Day?
But to many historians, and certainly
to its survivors, Pearl Harbour is unique.
"We will forever remember it as
inaugurating American participation in the greatest event of the 20th century:
World War II," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford history professor and
author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom From Fear: The American People
in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
"There's no other candidate for
an event as sweepingly transformative." World War II claimed 50 million
lives and toppled fascism. It secured America's claim as a world leader,
but also inaugurated a 45-year Cold War between the United States and the
Soviet Union.
"Those are just enormous events,"
Kennedi said. "It's difficult to see that the crisis that is now upon us
will have that magnitude and legacy." Dec. 7, 1941, is one of those "dates
that should be part of our national vocabulary," agreed Steve Gillon, a
history professor at the University of Oklahoma and a consultant for the
History Channel. (LAT-WP Svc)
