Pearl Harbor Remembered

"A date which will live in infamy," said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in reference to Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Thus it was that "Remember Pearl Harbor" became a catch-phrase for my generation, just as "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember the Maine" were for earlier generations. Even as I began my newspaper career in the mid-1960s, the annual Pearl Harbor story was a big deal. It was still the most recent military tragedy in American history and there were still enough World War II survivors living to require that memorial events receive front-page coverage. But now the numbers of World War II vets is growing increasingly smaller and the memory of that day in 1941 becomes more distant history rather than distant memory. I can remember a few times in my newspaper years when some younger news editor in charge of the next day's edition either forgot about Pearl Harbor Day or decided it wasn't a big deal anymore and didn't carry the obligatory story in that day's editions. We always heard about it, especially from the veterans' groups. Sunday's AJC carried a story about an 87-year-old Georgian veteran who was in Hawaii during the attack and today's paper has a story about an 86-year-old vet who just made his first trip back to scene of the attack after all these years. So, the event has been suitably noted.