Growing up when I did, Pearl Harbor Day was something that was punctually remembered every year.
As a pre-teen and middle schooler I had a large interest in World War II for reasons I cannot fully tell you at this time, so - perhaps more so than my peers - I understood what had happened and in a way, what it meant. What I did not really grasp was the visceral punch of the event in a way that made my grandparents; and parents' generation remember it ("celebrate" seems peculiarly inappropriate) as they did.
After September 11th, I got it.
It's still dark as this is being typed and the forecast is partly cloudy for today, unlike twenty four years ago when it was a bright blue morning here and in NYC. 2,977 dead that day makes it certain NOT to forget for myself, both those gone and the evil ideology that produced that day TB.
ReplyDeleteNylon12, I was on my commute and I can remember to this day right where I was in the commute when I heard the strike on the radio. It still haunts me.
DeleteSadly, it had slipped my mind about today being today until I saw your post. But that wound in my brain created by the day is still festered and sore and it takes very little to bring me right back to that day and how I felt.
ReplyDeleteEd, it is shocking to me how quickly I can go back to that day.
DeleteThough 24 years have elapsed since that day, in my mind and in my heart, it was yesterday.
ReplyDeleteMy feelings are as raw as the day it happened, Sarge.
DeleteI'll never forget. I was in the Coast Guard in Alameda, CA. I had sent in my retirement letter a month before, and had just received back my approval for retirement. Yes, the military has to APPROVE your retirement... I was in the shop when one of the guys from the break area came in and told us about the first tower being hit. We all went to the break area and watched things unfold on TV. We saw the second tower get hit. At that point we all knew things had changed forever. I still can't believe they didn't cancel my retirement and "stop-loss" me. ..And now, an entire generation has come of voting age who weren't even born when 9/11 happened. their attitude is "What was the big deal?" Worse, some of them actually believe we DESERVED 9/11! A person is shot dead in front of his wife and children because they didn't like what he was SAYING, and many applaud. How far we've fallen...
ReplyDeletePete, I had the experience of hearing it over the radio - and yes, there was very much a feeling that things had changed forever. I got the same feeling yesterday.
Delete(On a slightly funnier note, I cannot believe the military has to approve your retirement.)
Oh no. Those pictures. I can not bear to look at them.
ReplyDeleteGod help us all.
Sandi, I do not enjoy looking at them either. But it is important to remember, so that it does not happen again.
DeleteIt's almost hard to believe that there is now an entire generation for whom there is no factual experience of 9-11. How it united the country and how we all stood together as Americans. Now, the nations is fragmented beyond mending. How could that happen in only a couple of decades?
ReplyDeleteLeigh, next year will be a quarter of a century. Only one of Na Clann was alive at all during that time.
DeleteWe do indeed seem fragmented beyond mending. It happened, I think, because people came to see themselves an anything but Americans first.