Fewer Veterans to Remember Pearl Harbor Day

I never believed in all that "greatest generation" crap, but the WWII generation is our link to that history --- when the United States emerged as undisputed leader of the free world. As time goes by the war is relegated further to the past, and fewer folks will have direct memories to hand down to their loved ones. We'll have new traditions and new heroes, but some events are unique in their implications for American life and our political culture. Pearl Harbor is one of those events.

At New York Times, "Pearl Harbor Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone":

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.

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.”

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