Pearl Harbor memories fading with time

• More than 2%2C400 service members%2C 1%2C000 civilians were killed
• Historians see parallels with passage of Civil War veterans
• Historians race to preserve survivor%27s stories

SHREVEPORT, La. -- You could hardly escape reminders of it during World War II. And over the course of decades since, Dec. 7 has meant one thing to generations of Americans:

Pearl Harbor. Unprovoked attack. The need to be prepared.

But that message has become muted over the past few years by the thinning of the ranks of the men and women who survived the assault that Sunday morning on U.S. military facilities in Hawaii.

For the first time in years, a request to the community for news on remembrances or memorials, as well as calls to the largest American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts and the local War Veterans Home and veterans cemetery turned up nothing.

Former Louisiana state Sen. Jackson B. Davis, now 95, who was a Navy officer assigned to intelligence duties, says he has not been asked to talk to any groups this year. "That is unusual. I usually do."

"It's the same old story," Davis said, illustrating his point by taking it to an extreme. "We don't hear much about Gettysburg anymore, or Bunker Hill. Or when the Normans took over England — we don't hear much about that."

Davis is one of only three known Pearl Harbor survivors still alive in Shreveport-Bossier City.

"There's not many of us left to think about it," Davis said.

In 1991, at least two dozen local Pearl Harbor survivors received commemorative medallions belatedly authorized by Congress for the 50th anniversary of the attack. The delay was largely because of a general feeling that defeats are not celebrated, no matter how great their historic importance.

Tactically, Pearl Harbor was a U.S. defeat. In all, more than 2,400 soldiers, sailors and Marines were killed and almost 1,200 wounded, as well as more than 1,000 civilians, most of them by U.S. anti-aircraft artillery shells landing in residential areas.

In all, eight battleships were sunk or damaged so badly it took years for them to be repaired. Two, including the USS Arizona, were total losses. In addition, 10 other major ships were heavily damaged. In addition, 165 airplanes were destroyed.

Japanese losses numbered 185 airmen and sailors, 29 aircraft, five mini-submarines and a large submarine.

But the Japanese miscalculated. Their primary target, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers, were out of the harbor on exercises. And when initial reports of success and fear that a response by U.S. forces was imminent led to cancellation of a planned third strike, the Imperial Japanese navy left largely undamaged the vital fuel tank farms and submarine facility at Pearl Harbor.

The carriers, their vital fuel intact, and the long arm of the submarine fleet would take the war home to the Japanese. What began at Pearl Harbor ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It took almost four years, but Pearl Harbor ended up as a strategic victory for the United States

So why is this important U.S. military event of the 20th century fading in the popular memory? It could be that 2013 marks an irregular anniversary, 72 years. That doesn't convey the same urgency as a 50th or 75th anniversary. More likely, observers say, the culprit is time.

"In the 1920s, there were still reunions of Confederate veterans. But in the 1930s, there were very few of them left," Shreveport historian Gary Joiner said. "In fact, the last reunion was held here. People remember that because these were the guys who experienced it." When the last of these men died in the 1950s, there was a great resurgence of interest in that conflict, "and then it came too late."

Joiner sees a parallel with World War II veterans, especially Pearl Harbor survivors, veterans of the oldest and most significant part of U.S. involvement. "With World War II, we're losing so many veterans every day that we are seeing the same type of thing. It's almost a natural progression, from current events to memory to history."

As with the Civil War veterans, the work of preserving and processing the story of the Pearl Harbor veterans will shift to others.

"Now it's going to be the place of the professional historians and good amateur historians to come in and do for World War II veterans what was done in the late 1950s and since to the Civil War," Joiner said. The parades may stop, but the assessment will continue."

Donna Curtis, head of Shreveport Green, looks after her father, Pearl Harbor veteran William Banks.

The 99-year-old, who like many other local Pearl Harbor survivors has had his photos and memories preserved through R.W. Norton Art Foundation's continuous oral history program, was a lieutenant in charge of artillery protecting Pearl Harbor from attack by ships.

Curtis said her father, who broke his hip several weeks ago, remains active but unlike past years has not been asked to take part in any Pearl Harbor remembrances.

Curtis said she can understand why younger people may have trouble relating to World War II, which for people age 30 or younger might as well have been part of Roman Empire history.

"If you think about it, most of the kids today wouldn't know what you were talking about if you ask them about Vietnam, and we lost so many people in that one," she said. "They don't know about the Korean War. And World War II was huge, compared to those, and it was so personal to us. The country was so full of patriotic fervor. People wanted to serve. They would lie about their age to get in."

Shawn Bohannon — a military historian, author and archivist — also is an Air Force veteran of the nation's most recent conflicts. With time, those conflicts andveterans also will recede into the dim mists of time.

"It's just part of the natural aging process, the passage of history," he said.