Remembering Pearl Harbor ... The Lessons Are Many

President Truman once said that "The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know."

All of us know about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 which brought about our immediate entry into World War II.

Pearl Harbor, Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone is a story about the few remaining survivors of that historic attack and their last gathering today as a group. It says this in part:

"For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies, sharing memories of a day they still remember in searing detail.

But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors’ association. With a concession to the reality of time — of age, of deteriorating health and death — the association will disband on Dec. 31.

“We had no choice,” said William H. Eckel, 89, who was once the director of the Fourth Division of the survivors’ association, interviewed by telephone from Texas. “Wives and family members have been trying to keep it operating, but they just can’t do it. People are winding up in nursing homes and intensive care places.”

Harry R. Kerr, the director of the Southeast chapter, said there weren’t enough survivors left to keep the organization running. “We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to,” he said from his home in Atlanta, after deciding not to come this year. “We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore: Dec. 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”

The fact that this moment was inevitable has made this no less a difficult year for the survivors, some of whom are concerned that the event that defined their lives will soon be just another chapter in a history book, with no one left to go to schools and Rotary Club luncheons to offer a firsthand testimony of that day. As it is, speaking engagements by survivors like Mr. Kerr — who said he would miss church services on Sunday to commemorate the attack — can be discouraging affairs.

“I was talking in a school two years ago, and I was being introduced by a male teacher, and he said, ‘Mr. Kerr will be talking about Pearl Harbor,’ ” said Mr. Kerr. “And one of these little girls said, ‘Pearl Harbor? Who is she?’"

The importance of Pearl Harbor to our nation's history and future must not be forgotten. Its lessons are many and we should take the time to reflect on what's happened since then to our nation and world.

Perhaps more importantly, its teachings can instruct on what could lie ahead if we don't remain a strong and vigilant society of freedom loving and self governing people.

We'll try to address some of the many lessons of Pearl Harbor properly and in more detail in future writings.

Finally, as we take time today to properly remember what happened on December 7, 1941, let's further resolve to take advantage of the many teachings of Pearl Harbor in the coming seventy years as well.

Thanks. Bob.