Nows and Forevers

It’s Dec. 7, a date which will live in infamy. But will it live that way forever?

The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in 1941, when my grandparents had just graduated high school and several years before my parents were born. Yet no one in those two generations, the one that came of age during World War II or the one that came afterward, would ever forget what happened.

And so it was for my generation, even though I was born 26 years after the attack. When I was growing up, the World War II generation — Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation” — was still in the workforce, even though they were beginning to retire. Both my grandparents were World War II veterans. So were some of our teachers and our parents’ bosses and coworkers. Even in my first professional job, in the late 1980s, I worked not only with two World War II veterans but one who had been at Pearl Harbor, 81 years ago today.

So in that limited way, Pearl Harbor was one degree of separation. Since it was the only attack on United States territory since the War of 1812, it still had a lot of meaning. And it was kept alive by FDR’s iconic speech the day after the attack — it’s where “the day that will live in infamy” comes from — and by movies from “From Here to Eternity” (also a good book), “Tora! Tora! Tora” and, more recently, “Pearl Harbor.”

Yet Pearl Harbor has been receding from memory. The World War II generation is fading rapidly from the scene and, increasingly, so are their kids. It’s been eight decades since the attack and so much has changed since then. I wonder, just on that basis alone, whether or not Pearl Harbor will continue to fade as something to remember in the coming generations.

That’s hard to believe a bit. People alive 81 years ago today remembered, until they died, could tell you where they were when they heard about the Pearl Harbor attack. The same way that those alive in November 1963 could tell you were they were when they heard about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Or where you were when the World Trade Center was attacked.

I know I won’t ever forget that.

But even 9/11, which is one of the most vivid memories in my life, is no longer universal. For the 25 years or more of people born either after 9/11 or who were too young to remember, it has less of an impact. It’s just another date. I felt that way about Pearl Harbor and JFK’s assassination, the latter that took place four years before I was born. They were significant dates in history, yes. But they were also significant to my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents. It wasn’t significant to me.

I fell into that trap with 9/11. It was personal to me, as I lived in the New York metro area at the time, and covered the attacks and the aftermath. A childhood acquaintance died at the Trade Center. And it was one of the signature moments of our era, which rings down even more than two decades later. But with the generation since, that’s not the case. I fear 9/11 will soon become part of history and not as much of a lived experience and pain point as it was for those of us who were alive then, and that bothers me. The passage of time will do that.

Like how I have felt about Dec. 7.