Remembering Pearl Harbor 77 years later

This thread didn't come to my attention until today, so I'm (unfortunately) a day late. On the bright side, it's not too late for me to mention that today's the 77th anniversary of when the US declared war on Japan.

But going back to the original topic, it's too bad that no USS Arizona survivors were able to attend the remembrance ceremony at all. Those of them that are still with us must be pretty disappointed, to say the least.

As I'm sure is true for a great many people, it's so hard for me to take in how completely different the 21st Century world is relative to its WW2-era counterpart. We went from restrained conservatism to permissive society, big honkin' computers to billions of smart devices, and continent-crushing conflicts to a comparative era of peace and international cooperation in a "mere" seven-point-something decades, though we can't necessarily count on that upswing in prosperity to continue.

Truly, though, it makes me wonder about how life will be in another seventy or so years--when my generation is the one that'll have grown up in the midst of the last living Greatest Generation members, just as they came of age in the twilight years of elderly Civil War veterans who were still alive when they were young; I guess we're not quite as separated from the past as we might first believe, now that I think about it.

But that's my spiel on remembering Pearl Harbor and what it entailed. May the victims of that attack rest in peace and know that--wherever they may be--they haven't been forgotten by future generations.

Thank you for reading,
Zyobot

Indeed. In fact, it remains an iconic and thus practically unforgettable presidential speech to this day.

At this point, pretty much nothing can stop it from going down as one of the greatest declarations in American history--and certain amongst the most important of the 20th Century.

I just found something of interest. According to Popular Mechanics, the (US) military's still unsure exactly how many people died at Pearl Harbor. Since November of this year, they identified 6 men who died on the USS Oklahoma; they hope to have about 80 percent of them narrowed down by 2020 or so.