December 7: Day of Infamy and Empathy

Day of Infamy and Empathy

I feel that I would be disrespectful of me not to include this day that solemnly commemorates the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the start of WWII. There are many fine historical accounts of the event, so none will be repeated here…

What I choose to reflect on, and give thanks for, are my many older uncles and cousins who served in what I believe to be our last moral or just war; Where that was a near consensus that defined the boundaries of good and evil, and that demonstrated, with blood and tears, the value of sacrifice for human freedom, dignity, and a more democratic way of life. 

They were the members of “The Greatest Generation” who came home from the battlefield, and who then silently persevered, and bravely endured the scars. They kept that turmoil that was their lived experience of war, and its various horrors, and did not inflict on the next generation. Yet, they did endure, and went on to built-imperfectly to be sure- a dynamic middle class and an almost storybook childhood for those who were children in the 1950s.

However, as I see it, and to some small degree experienced it with them, it was an awful silence that they kept about the price they paid: Duty, honor, bravery, courage all noble virtues in hand, yet there was this shared, eerie silence when it came to telling those stories and sharing those transformative and noble experiences with the younger generation. 

That silence, in part, allowed us to make films that glorified war, and filled our theaters with a sacrosanct belief in the rightness of our cause, and provided us with a glossed overly protective layer of heroism; without truly teaching the next generation about what the true cost of war was and the price it exacts from the human soul.

I had one uncle at Normandy Beach, one at Anzo, a cousin with Patton, and one who was stacked up among the dead at Pearl Harbor. He had left an abusive home at age 16, and ran straight for the Navy in 1936. I only got to know him once his 20 years were almost up, when he came to live with my aunt and my grandmother, until they got married a few years later. 

As so many in that generation had done, he chose self-medication with lots of alcohol, as the ravages of PTSD were unknown. Unable to adjust back into the rapidly changing contemporary society, He tried valiantly to hold on to his pre-1960’s outlook, but eventually retreated into right wing ideals and a low grade constant depression. My Boomer generation was protected from those harsh realities by their silence, their valor, and their patriotism. However, It also did not make our generation aware or ready for the tragedy that was to become Vietnam. 

Despite the absence of teaching, and the silence of their suffering, I will always remember them with my love and my admiration for the world they gave to us, and will hold them in the highest respect, for the price they paid…