This morning in church some one prayed aloud in remembrance of Pearl Harbor, 73 years ago today. I looked around at the congregation to see how many could even remember Pearl Harbor. Although United Methodist congregations are often estuaries of the elderly, I spotted only about half dozen in my relatively young church.
WWII is almost as far away now as the Civil War would have been in 1941. And the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans are starting to resemble film footage of the last Civil War veterans reunions in the 1930s and 1940s. The last really big one was the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, when about 1800 veterans from north and south came to Gettysburg at the federal government’s expense. FDR addressed them. He was born almost 20 years after the Civil War, just as Obama was born nearly two decades after WWII.
There’s a touching account of today’s reunion of four survivors of the U.S.S. Arizona, out of a total nine living survivors, in Honolulu. Two were in wheel chairs, and all four of course are in their nineties. One recalled he had just returned from church that Sunday morning when the Japanese attacked. He credited his faith for survival and endurance. Nearly 1200 died on their ship on that day.
Probably there’ll be WWII vets around another 15-20 years or so, as the last few reach the limits of human longevity. But WWII is no longer a personal memory for many Americans and is now a distant historical event understood mainly through black and white photos, like the Civil War, plus film footage.
I wish I had asked my grandparents their memories of the news from Pearl Harbor. One grandmother told me she recalled ironing clothes while listening to FDR’s declaration of war before Congress the day after. There’s really no equivalent in recent memory of a similarly searing event except of course 9-11.
The suggestion of prayer at my church this morning to recall Pearl Harbor was important. God’s purposes and lessons in the world cannot be understood without remembering history. Without historical memory, we are lost in the narrow egotism of our own direct generational experiences. Already there are young people today shaped by their reactions to long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but having little to no recall of 9-11. Similarly the anti-war protesters of the 1960s lacked their parents’ lifelong aversion to military weakness thanks to recall of Pearl Harbor.
Christianity is a faith of remembrance. The Scriptures recite many centuries of human interaction with God that remain forever sacred and uniquely instructive. But the 2000 years since then are also providential and important. Our faith warns against forgetting and requires perpetual remembrance.
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