Patch Blog: A Look Back in Time, Pearl Harbor Day

On Dec. 11—the Sunday after Pearl Harbor Day—I'll be running the Honolulu Marathon as a fund raising event for AIDS Project Los Angeles. Why a marathon? Why Pearl Harbor Day? Why raise funds for AIDS Project Los Angeles?

Let’s start with Pearl Harbor Day.

Actually, I need to begin with the question  Most of us are old enough to feel a gut connection with Sept. 11, 2001 ten years after that event. So many nerves are struck. We can see visions of the World Trade Center; hear sounds of the first responders; and feel tears that bring us instantly back to the trauma of that dramatic moment. It is like stepping into a time warp. 

It was especially hard for me because I was hundreds of miles away from home and away from my family and taking care of my mother's funeral arrangements. It was very scary. My first thoughts were of my family and how to reunite with them. But there was no transportation at that time. No airlplanes were allowed in the sky. All the trains and buses were already packed full. And you couldn’t get a rental car. All the feelings of siege, fear, frustration and anger reached up from the darkness below and grabbed hold of me. 

Reconnecting with that event ten years ago is to rub its searing confusion and pain into your face.

A much smaller number of us can respond similarly to the question: “Where were you when JFK was shot?” That happened nearly 50 years ago, and most of us who were there at that moment step back into another time. We can remember watching on television the unfolding of the drama of that Thanksgiving weekend. There was the military parade led by the riderless horse with the empty boots upside down in the stirrups; and the caisson with the assassinated President; and Jaqueline, the beautiful, dignified Queen of Camelot crying and dressed in black with her black veil. 

This is America. How could it happen here? It was such a shock to all of us.

Only a few of us can respond with deep emotion to the question: “Where were you on Pearl Harbor Day?” That happened 70 years ago (this coming Dec. 7) and it's hard to feel the drama because that question does not strike a nerve in you. Yet “Pearl Harbor Day” evoked for decades after 1941 all the same emotions that “9/11” evokes in Americans today.

I wasn’t present on Pearl Harbor Day, but for me that day has real significance because my mother’s birthday was Dec. 7 and the larger family frequently got together that day. All through my childhood I was reminded of Dec. 7 and the depth of feelings that drama evoked.

Finally, it was on Dec. 7 (long after 1941) that we discovered that we were going to have our first child. So in my family there is a sense of drama around Pearl Harbor Day that can approach the deep feelings around 9/11 or JFK’s assassination. For me, going to Honolulu on the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day is a momentous occasion.

The next question: Why a Marathon? We’ll look at that next time.