Our View: 70 years on

Like every other great historical event, Pearl Harbor is becoming that way.

But it's not quite there yet.

About 3,000 veterans of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack remain. Most of them can still remember that day. They will speak about it today, to families and friends, to strangers, to children. Some will gather together with old mates. But reunions have dwindled with the number of those still alive to reunite.

In some families, even with the veterans departed, there remain things to touch. Those of the boomer generation might remember a father's campaign ribbons, cloth and colors that felt rich and real -- seasoned in some way that told a fascinated boy that these weren't trinkets but full of meaning, even if they were stashed in a box in the attic, out of the way of everyday life.

Those fathers and mothers told stories of war years, abroad and at home, but that's not where they lived. Relics of Pearl Harbor and the other battles and passages of World War II went to the attic while those same fathers and mothers built the postwar nation. Their monument, their memorial? The United States of America, from the 1940s on. Far better than bronze or stone.

The veterans remember this day for many reasons. It was an attack out of the blue, literally and metaphorically. More than 3,000 Americans were killed or wounded, some entombed forever in the harbor. Their lives changed for keeps that day. The world changed. Some veterans of that time didn't start remembering aloud until later in life, because they were too busy getting on with their lives, raising their children and making a nation full of promise for those children.

They'll remember today. So should the rest of us. Anniversaries can be hollow markers, dulled by cliches and dismissed with lip service. But if we remember nothing else about the day, we'd do well to remember the quintessential description given by many of the old veterans about their service -- "We did what we had to do."

"Remember Pearl Harbor" is no longer a war cry. But it is good duty, a way to keep in touch with that day so that those who endured it can leave us the memories of what they did.

BOTTOM LINE: Seventy years after Pearl Harbor, there's still reason to remember.