By: Paul S. Marchand
Patsy’s Bar, the Bronx.
That’s where my dad remembers being on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. Eight years old, munching on pizza, and sipping an illegal beer.
Seventy years have passed since the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor. An anniversary that falls on some multiple of ten years always seems to call forth more discussion and reminiscence than an "off year" anniversary. So it is now, in 2011, when 70 years have passed to the day since my dad and the others at Patsy’s Bar heard the news.
The number of those who remember that day --- to say nothing of those who were of military age at the time --- ineluctably grows smaller with each passing year and each passing decade. Seven years ago, writing on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, I noted that the "Greatest Generation" which had stormed ashore on the continent of Europe on June 6, 1944, was passing rapidly into eternity, and as their numbers diminished, World War II was also passing out of living memory; the long goodbye continues.
Seven years later, the number of World War II veterans has diminished even further; those for whom Pearl Harbor is still living memory are most likely to have experienced December 7, 1941 as children, like my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar.
While it will probably be at least another couple of decades before the last living American World War II veteran dies, (our last living World War I veteran passed away only recently) the days when there were World War II veterans in every neighborhood and on every block are long gone. A few days ago, the Desert Sun reported that the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors organization was folding; there were no longer enough living Pearl Harbor survivors in the Coachella Valley to be able to sustain their organization. By 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the number of living veterans of that conflict will be close to the vanishing point.
As our collective living memory essentially ceases to be that of the men and women who served and fought during World War II, it shifts to be that of those who were children during what Winston Churchill called those "stern days." I think of my eight year old dad in Patsy’s Bar at the beginning, and I think of my six year old mom, living in El Paso and witnessing the bright flash of the first atomic test up near Alamogordo just three and a half years later in the summer of 1945.
My own generation, the Baby Boomers, was the first to have no direct recall of the Second World War, but we did grow up in communities in which the presence of World War II veterans was still the rule, not the exception. Growing up at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles was to grow up in a place full of veterans --- some still in their vigorous late 40s and early 50s --- who had served in the armed forces not only of the United States and our allies, but even of the Axis as well.
The millennial generation --- those born in the 90s and just coming-of-age now --- and those born in this century, are even further removed from World War II than were we Boomers. For them, the memory of the Second World War can be as distant and sepia-toned as that of the Civil War. The world my millennial cousins inhabit is one in which the barriers and dispensations my generation took for granted simply do not exist.
How does one explain the postwar partition of Germany to someone who was a toddler, or not even living, when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany once again became one?
How does one explain to a young cousin jetting off to Bratislava that not too long ago the Czech Republic and Slovakia were once part of the unified country called Czechoslovakia?
How does one explain that the country known for quality automobiles, consumer electronics, Pokémon, manga, and animé was once feared and hated on account of the "sneak attack" against Pearl Harbor?
How does one explain that the totalitarian communist state which was, in turn, our World War II ally and our Cold War adversary has since turned into a capitalistic, kleptocratic, frenemy?
Seventy years on, how does one explain the sense of disquiet that comes over so many of us on this 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor that perhaps we took more for granted than we should have done those World War II veterans in our midst ---the ones who saved the world--- even if many of them would have been embarrassed to be so lauded?
For, in the end, that is exactly what they did.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. His dad was in Patsy’s Bar on Pearl Harbor Day, and his grandfather served in World War II. The views expressed herein are his own.
