Veterans worry day is being forgotten

Although war had raged in Europe and Asia for years, a Sunday morning strike on Hawaii brought the United States into the battle.

By MIKE BILLINGTON
The News Journal
12/07/2005

Carol Cummins watched her mother sobbing and wondered why. Dec. 7 was her mom's birthday, after all, and she should have been smiling and laughing in their New Castle County home. But the year was 1941, and the country was soon to be at war.

Not far away, in Newark, 10-year-old Meredith Thomas couldn't really grasp what happened until the next day. After listening to a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his elementary school teacher abruptly walked out of the classroom, her face contorted in anguish.

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese made Dec. 7, 1941, as FDR said in that famous radio broadcast, "a date which will live in infamy."

Fred Hess used to think that was so, but these days he's worried that the president was wrong. He's afraid that the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor soon will go unremarked and unremembered.

"It's mind-boggling to me that so many kids don't even know about Pearl Harbor and what it was and what it meant," said Hess, 78, as he sat in Jack Hanna's Newport barbershop working out the last details for today's annual memorial service.

It's one of the few Pearl Harbor celebrations in Delaware today. In contrast, Americans gather by the thousands on Sept. 11, a tragedy that is fresher in the minds of most. Comparisons with 9/11, though, bother some WWII veterans who point out that the terrorist attacks of 2001 did not thrust the United States into a two-front war for survival.

Pearl Harbor, they argue, was a more seminal moment in U.S. history.

"We have to keep this going. If we give it up, who's going to carry it on? Who's going to take the time to remember that this was a world event, not just one involving the United States?" Hess said. "No young people seem to want to carry this on, to replace us, so we keep doing it. Someone has to do it."

The Pearl Harbor attack was a tactical success, but a strategic blunder.

One bright spot centered around the actions of George Welch, a Delawarean who climbed into his fighter plane and shot down four of the 29 Japanese planes destroyed that day. Welch, son of a DuPont Co. chemist, was recommended for the Medal of Honor but received the Distinguished Flying Cross because Army officials -- embarrassed by the fact they had been caught unawares -- said he'd taken off without proper orders. Welch served in the Pacific throughout the war and became one of the country's leading aces, shooting down a total of 16 Japanese aircraft.

The attack inflamed Americans, who had been divided over the prospect of fighting against the Nazis and Italians in Europe. Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, American men were rushing to enlist in the armed forces. Within months, many American women also would sign up for military duty, while others took jobs in business and industry. No longer divided, the country rapidly came together.

Indelible memories

"It was very poignant, to see your mother crying on her birthday when you're only 5 years old," Carol Cummins said. "Later, we all took part in the war effort. We did war bond drives, bringing a few pennies to school each week. ... Everyone we knew was either fighting the war overseas or fighting on the home front. It was the one war that people were really into pulling together. It was a whole different atmosphere from what we have today. Kids today have never seen anything like that."

Her husband, Bob Cummins, agreed. Too young to serve in World War II, he later would be wounded fighting in Korea with the 3rd Infantry Division. Cummins said many young people don't seem to be aware of the significance of Pearl Harbor or know very much at all about World War II.

That, Thomas said, is a tragedy.

"Pearl Harbor was more than an attack, it was murder and it should never be forgotten," he said. His next-door neighbors had a son at Pearl Harbor who survived that day. When Roscoe Campbell later came home, he told Thomas what he'd seen.

Hanna, who has helped Hess coordinate the Newport Pearl Harbor ceremony for the past 32 years, said he, too, is worried that there will come a day when no one pays tribute to those who died that Sunday morning.

"We can't forget Pearl Harbor, but I'm afraid that we might. At one time we had some young people from some of the schools helping us out with the ceremony, and they didn't even know what Pearl Harbor was," Hanna said. "That's so sad."

Hanna was drafted and went to Fort Dix, N.J., at the end of World War II. When he arrived, he was told to go home.

"They were letting people out, not taking people in, so I'm not a veteran," he said. "But you don't have to be a veteran to understand what Pearl Harbor was and what it meant."

Bill Carroll, a World War II veteran who heads Delaware's Military Order of the Purple Heart, is not as pessimistic as some when it comes to Pearl Harbor Day.

"I certainly have a concern that it not be forgotten, but I'm not worried that it will be," he said. "It was such a tragic event that it's something that will always be part of our history."

Tom Daws, the state president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, said the task of keeping alive the memories of significant events such as Pearl Harbor Day and the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy is becoming one that his generation must now shoulder.

"History dictates that we would never forget Pearl Harbor Day because, today, they don't teach that part of American history in the schools," said Daws, a former Marine.

"We haven't forgotten Pearl Harbor Day and I don't think that the future generations of warriors coming home will either. The general public might not remember, but those who served always will," he said.

Hess said he hopes that is true. A former sergeant in the 33rd Infantry, he said forgetting the past makes it hard to plan for the future.

"Pearl Harbor was a tragic event, but such a significant one too," he said. "All over the world people are still suffering from the aftereffects of that war."