12-07-41

[Bruce Cohen]

Tomorrow, stop and give thought to the date and what it means.

RIP my brothers

Bruce

Signature deleted due to the solemn nature of this post

[Pappy]

Too many won't even know it is the anniversary of that infamous day.

[BobSch]

Too many won't even know it is the anniversary of that infamous day.

Sad, but true. Schools aren't doing a very good job of teaching history these days, and every year there's fewer and fewer WWII vets around to pass the story down.

[JSUPreston]

I just read recently that the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association will disband after this year due to how many have passed away and that they are getting to where they can't travel. http://blog.al.com/live/2011/12/pear...niversary.html

A man (former Methodist minister) at my church is a WWII vet. I've adopted him and his wife as grandparents. Wonderful people. He was able to go on an honor flight either last year or this year, and the emotions he showed when he was telling me about it were overwhelming. It saddens me to think that all these veterans and families will soon be gone. My friend recently turned 90, and is in great health for his age, but now time is his enemy. I know there are many stories he can tell that will never make it into a history book.

A previous post talked about how the schools aren't really teaching the history of what happened. I'm afraid you were right...but I made sure to remind my son of the events and talked to him about it. It's important to me that my children know our history. Who knows, they may be the ones to prevent it from happening again.

Thank you to all that have served. Know that my family and I honor and respect your sacrifices.

[tommyt654]

My Dad wasn't there during the attack but did get stationed there for a short time before shipping out to the pacific to fight. He was an Army Air Corp fighter pilot who finally wound up in the later part of the war in Okinawa after the Marine corp took heavy casualties takin that small island for an air strip that later on served as the main offensive combat fighter base when they dropped the "Bomb" to finally end the war. I salute them all, especially those who died today so very long ago

[LCHIEN]

just thinking about how time marches on and how Dec 7 '41 was 70 years ago.
I didn't live then of course, but WWI was pretty fresh history to me when I grew up and started to appreciate history - which was in the 60s'

So WWII to me now is 70 years distant. In the 60's comparable history 70 years previous was set in the 1890s - I though that was OLD history back then. THat would be before Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American war...

[cwsmith]

My Uncle Lawrence went down with the battleship Oklahoma. (I believe he was a Machinist Mate.) My Dad and his brothers enlisted within a few weeks after that. My Dad told me he was stationed at Pearl for a short time before being sent to the South Pacific. Neither my Dad or any of my Uncles ever talked about the war or their service. I just remember my Dad's picture in uniform (he was a staff sergeant in the army) and by his insignia I know he was in artillery.

Of course I never knew Uncle Lawrence, as I didn't come along until 1944. But, my grandmother had lots of souviners from the Phillipeans and other places Uncle Lawrence had been before December 7th and there was always a picture of him in his uniform which was kept in a frame on the piano, next to a model of the Oklahoma that my grandfather had made.

In the dining room, Grandpa always kept those wide, rotoscope pictures of the "boys" wth their units. They always held great interest for me when I was a little guy and today, history (especially military history) is one of my great interests. I've had the honor to know (and call friends) a few WWII veterans over the years. It is a great shame that later generations have little or no interest... even Vietnam seems distant and unknown to most young people today.

CWS