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Lessons from history

It was a little more than a month ago when we started to put together possible story ideas to accompany national coverage of  Wednesday’s 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

At the top of the list was to attempt to locate an area resident who was a survivor of the attack of Dec. 7, 1941. No name came to mind when those of us in the newsroom gathered to meet, but we were sure there had to be somebody in our community who had lived through that day. As reporters checked in with officials from veterans organizations across the region, we learned that it appears there is no one left who was serving at our naval station in Oahu on that Sunday morning.

Discovering that offered a reminder about how much time has actually passed since World War II  and that sometime soon — very much too soon — we will have lost the ability to get firsthand knowledge of one of the most significant events of our modern history from those who were involved in the battles and from those who were at home.

That came as a surprise, but I guess it really shouldn’t have. The obituaries we print every day on our pages offer sobering reminders. When you read about the death of someone who served during the second world war, you find that person died in their late 80s or early 90s. In fact, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports that there are only about 620,000 veterans of World War II still alive and that 372 of them die each day. And, as David M. Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reminded us last Sunday, only 2.3 percent of living Americans have real-life memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

That’s one of the things that makes history interesting. The farther we get from an actual event, the less able we are to learn about it directly from those who are involved, and that means the understanding of that event might slip from our awareness.

It’s a reality I thought about during the past week while remembering a couple of sights that have been seen.

Having been born in 1958, I  don’t have direct memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But I remember stories shared by my parents and grandparents about that period, and I have read many newspaper articles and books about the attack. I also had the privilege of visiting Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial just a few years ago.

It was a moving and emotional late morning and early afternoon, touring the exhibits that detail the attack and then taking the brief boat ride to the memorial. Having the chance to see the wall that contained the names of all the sailors and Marines of the Arizona who died that day and looking into the water and being able to see what is left of the ship offered a new perspective on the event.

It also offered a little perspective of the scope of the destruction. We’ve all had the chance to read about the battleships that were moored along Ford Island 75 years ago, but it was hard to get your mind around how magnificent they actually were until you looked just off to the side of the memorial and saw the USS Missouri. Now a floating museum, the Missouri was the battleship on which Japan surrendered to end World War II.

Those thoughts also brought to mind a trip made to New York City in the mid-1980s that included a visit to the observation deck of the World Trade Center. The location offered a great view of the city, and the windows had outlines of the buildings marked so you could position yourself and find exactly what you were looking for. It was amazing that the iconic Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, structures that seemed so tall when you saw them from the street, were dwarfed by then-new towers.

It’s a memory that was replayed again and again in my mind right around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, when another set of airplanes, this time commandeered commercial airliners, were used to attack our country.

While many of us can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on that Sept. 11, it’s interesting to consider  that more than 15 years have passed, which means students who will graduate from high school in the spring were toddlers then and likely don’t have many direct memories, which, no doubt, will have an affect on their view of history.

As expected, there are not many survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack who are still alive. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but Peter Holley of the Washington Post reported in 2014 that Eileen Martinez, the chief of interpretation for the Arizona memorial, estimated that there were between 2,000 and 2,500 survivors.

When they are gone, we will have lost the ability to hear them describe what happened with the emotions that can only be shared by someone who was actually a part of an event. And that loss, which is inevitable, will change forever the way we look at moments that have changed our lives.

(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times.)

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