It won’t be too many years before the living memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor is as gone as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand or the shelling of Fort Sumter or the Shot Heard Round the World. Does it matter whether such events make it into a collective awareness beyond actual memory? I think it does.

According to the Park Service, about 2 million people visit each year, so it’s unlikely that the awareness will fade too soon. This image dates to July 1979, which I took on the approach to the memorial. That was almost closer in time to the attack than to the present (not quite: 38 years vs. 36 years), which itself is a sobering thought.

Inside are a list of the Arizona’s dead. The inscription also says: To the Memory of the Gallant Men Here Entombed and their shipmates who gave their lives in action on 7 December 1941, on the U.S.S. Arizona.