By Jay Jamison
I was watching “Jeopardy!” with friends and the Daily Double clue was something like, this country’s demilitarized zone became a park after 1975. We all yelled, “What is Vietnam?” The contestant stared blankly at the camera. We all knew the answer, so how come the contestant was clueless? Then it occurred to each of us that the contestant was too young to even have a childhood memory of the Vietnam War. We each became aware of how old we are.
Events that we did not live through often do not rise to the importance of memory retention. That’s one reason why we often resort to oral and written histories to provide some background for things that we do experience. Such knowledge can give us markers that can help us with future plans. A wise philosopher, George Santayana, supposedly once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
How many readers know about the disaster that befell the United States Navy the last week of February 1942? I wasn’t alive in 1942, and I have no firsthand, personal memory of anything that happened in World War II. I know about that battle because one of the survivors of the United States Asiatic Fleet in the Battle of Java Sea told me about it. I never lost interest in that sad story, and I continued to research that battle that virtually destroyed an American and Allied fleet. Sadly, the units and men of the United States Asiatic Fleet have mostly been forgotten.
Some people love history (I do), and some people hate history (too many dates and names to remember). Whether you love it or hate it, history has a way of defining who you are. I heard the gripping story of a terrified 25-year-old sailor, at his battle station in an antique destroyer, which was engaging enemy cruisers in a surface torpedo attack in broad daylight — a near suicidal mission. That story from the South Pacific has become part of me, the history I never knew until someone told me about it.
In some tribes, which have no written language, one of the most important members of the community is the historian. It is that person’s job to remember what happened in the tribe’s past and to pass that knowledge on to the next generation. My Uncle Bob telling me about his experience in battle, was acting somewhat in the manner of the tribal historian. Just before he passed away, he told his memories to an interviewer for the United States Naval Institute, recounting his days in the Asiatic Fleet. We now have a transcript of those long held memories, stories that would otherwise have died with him. Fortunately, many veterans have done the same. Had my uncle not told me about the Battle of Java Sea, I would probably have remained as ignorant of that terrible World War II debacle as the “Jeopardy!” contestant was about the Vietnam War.
Learning our history, both the good and the bad, unvarnished by sentiment, may help us to avoid costly repetitions in policies of war and peace, among many other things. February 27 may seem like another day to most readers, but to me it conjures images of a young man muscling enormous shells from the magazine to the guns above.
