Hearing Silent Voices

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. We remember the day that our country was attacked by Japan or as the politically correct historian would say, "the offensive directive of the Axis Powers." It sounds clinical, and less adversarial. You don't have to recall the tragedy as anything more than a military attack of the past, an historical cause and effect, or an academic discussion of strategic warfare. The day is coming when those who were present or are able to remember the occasion are fading fast. Their deaths are imminent, their minds are growing dimmer, and their generation is reclusive. I have no link to this time. The first part of the 20th century has no living testimony in my life. The grave has swallowed all the memories and oral tradition. To reminisce and be taken through that corridor of time and space, to hear the first-hand account, to feel the raw emotions, to connect to the soul that was destined to recount and not undergo the suffering, such a perspective has no place in my current existence. They are simply photographs on a wall. I buried the past...laid flowers, and ceremonially said my farewell. I can only hear echoes, feel faint after-shocks, and see residual evidence of what used to be. I will read the text, discuss the theories, and analyze the future consequences, but I will leave the heart-wrenching discovery of yesterday to those who can hold these witnesses near.