Pearl Harbor Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone (Pearl Harbor Survivors Group Ends)

[ellisonz]

Emerie Aresenaul, front, with other Pearl Harbor survivors. - Hugh Gentry/Reuters

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 6, 2011

HONOLULU — 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.

Bernard Comito, of Dalton, Ohio, said: “You have an organization that doesn't replenish itself. We don't get new members.”

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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/fewer-veterans-to-remember-pearl-harbor-day.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

I had the privilege to meet a corpsman man a few months ago who lived in a house where our current family house stands in Honolulu; he and his family came to see where he had lived before he was shipped off. His comments had about the feeling of the time were quite interesting, he had consulted on Pearl Harbor (I know, I know) and emphasized how meaningful the Doolittle Raid was to national morale

R.I.P Pearl Harbors Survivors Association.

[Adsos Letter]

1. There is something grounding for me in talking with older people

about their memories of events which most of us only know as history. My wife's uncle Andy flew B-17's against targets in Germany; he survived an AA hit which killed the pilot, and left him to fly the plane home with a baseball-sized hole blown out of his leg.

Movies, books, documentaries, each give different ways of understanding the past, but talking to Andy always reminded me of the ordinariness of so many who experienced really extraordinary things, and I don't mean that in any negative sense at all. He was an average guy who, at 21 years of age (I think;I know he was very young) survived a lot of missions over Germany, and flew the bomber home with a large hole in his leg...and then came home and lived a very normal life (albeit, with a cane and some pretty vivid memories).

One of my favorite seminars in grad school was Oral History; interviewing people about their experiences was always an eye opener, and one I wish I could have made a career of.

[bemildred]

2. I was thinking that, used to be a big deal when I was a kid.

Now it's only for the cognoscenti.