Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Seventy years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defining moment for my parent’s generation and the single greatest catalyst for my country’s entry into the Second World War.  A full generation has come and almost gone since that dreadful event.  Very few who witnessed it are still alive to tell their stories.  The number of those who even remember is rapidly diminishing.  When I was a youngster, not so very many years ago, there were many more veterans of World War I living than veterans of World War II now.  A sobering insight into mortality and the passing of years.

A family member of mine graduated high school in 1938 and very much wanted to join the military, both to see the world and to get the hell off the farm.  Some of his friends joined the Navy and he liked what he read in their letters home.  The catch was, as a minor, one of his parents had to sign permission papers.  The young man’s mother didn’t want him to go, and his father knew better than to cross her, so neither signed.  Their son bowed to their wishes and went on to find other work, mostly off the farm.  By late 1941, his Navy buddies were stationed together on a massive battle ship.  In those days it was common for local boys and family members to serve together.  (One would have thought the tremendous losses suffered by some communities, both Blue and Gray, during the War Between the States would have ended that practice, some hamlets losing an entire generation of their young men, but it continued, officially or otherwise, and would continue even beyond the horrific loss of the five Sullivan brothers at Guadalcanal.)

His parents’ refusal to sign for their teen son was the reason he wasn’t with his buddies on that sunny Sunday morning as their ship sat at anchor off Oahu.  He wasn’t with them when the silver planes painted with Rising Suns dove on ships and installations across the island and released their ordinance.  He wasn’t aboard their torpedoed ship when she rolled in her moorings, and he didn’t die with his friends, all of them, on that monumental "day of infamy."  He never quite forgave himself for not being on the Arizona that morning, but I can only be grateful.  He was my father.