Or maybe just a date that sometimes flutters across the consciousness of America whenever the latest movie depicting the attack on Pearl Harbor comes out, and even then, the headlining actors are more memorable than the actual date. I dug out my "Remember Pearl Harbor" pin, which is my favorite because it has an actual pearl in stead of the word pearl on the pin. I pinned it on, and no one noticed. It's frustrating. Unless you're the History Channel or Turner Classic Movies, the day just slides right by with absolutely no notice.
I get upset, and I don't really know why, because I shouldn't expect any different. I mean, it's not this generation's cause, and all those who remember are dying. My grandfather was there, and he was an active member of the Pearl Harbor Survivor's. Now their sons and daughters are taking over, but it's petering out altogether. I don't expect people to know that army bases, like Fort Benning, were also attacked, not just the naval ships. I don't expect them to know about both waves, and how the island was completely cut off from the main land out of fear, or how the people were half starving and the army lived off of pineapples in pineapple plantation.
I just wish they...remembered. Though, I completely less 9/11 and the anniversary of Katrina pass by without acknowledgement. It's not that I belittle their experiences...they just weren't mine. Yes, I was alive for both, but I feel completely removed. Even living in New Orleans, I felt removed from Katrina. It wasn't my tragedy, and I can't put those shoes on. However, I have a little Hawaiian dust that's nearly seventy years old on my shoes.
My grandfather died when I was eight. Only eight. I remember how much he loved me, though. One thing he never talked about was the war. A church member asked him to talk about it while he recorded it on video, which he did before he died. To my knowledge, it was the only time he talked about it. I watched the video, and my heart was torn in two. That wasn't just a man on a TV. That was MY grandfather. He watched the skies rain down fire for two hours. He was so close to his attackers that he could see their mustaches. He lived illegally off of pineapples from a plantation because he was dropped there with the rest of his unit, and told that someone would return for them. But no one did. Not for a long time.
Maybe that's it. Maybe it's the personal connection. Even still, though, I know plenty of people whose whole worlds were changed by Katrina. Is it because I walked in expecting that? I never expected to be so moved by my grandfather's story, so when I was, it floored me. Maybe because I loved him so much before I was aware. I love my friends who survived Katrina, but they were already survivors in my eyes. My grandfather wasn't until after he died. Then again, maybe because no else has forgotten Katrina, I don't get offended, as I do with Pearl Harbor.
In Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, Margaret Hale befriends those beneath her class in a mill-town in late nineteenth century northern England. The inner city is horrid and crowded. But as she makes friends, her opinion changes of the town. At one point, she rushes to the rough side of town, running late for a visit with one of her new friends.
"As she went along the crowded narrow streets, she felt how much of interest they had gained by the simple fact of her having learnt to care for a dweller in them."
I guess that's why no one cares about Pearl Harbor survivors anymore. They just don't know any. I suppose I'm the last guard.
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