There is not a particle of doubt that Vineyarders who were alive and understanding of world events on Dec. 7. 1941 found themselves yesterday, on the twentieth anniversary of that day, remembering all sorts of circumstances. The sunny, rather brisk weather of that fateful Sunday is as clear as was the sunlight then.
A December Sunday on the Vineyard, especially in the winter way of life, is a day of family rides, of comfortable gathering around the dinner table, of a thousand and one informal things important to the individual or the family, though perhaps to no one else.
Yesterday came a natural dwelling on memories of little things: what one was doing when the news of Pearl Harbor came through, where one first heard it, who one talked with in surprise, consternation, apprehension, how one felt, and what one did the rest of the day that was to change history.
There was an odd feeling, too, coming with the reflection that to unnumbered men and women, grown to adulthood since Dec. 7, 1941, the experience of Pearl Harbor was secondhand, a story told, a part of history not remembered, but only told. One of the decisive occurrences in the lifetime of those who knew Pearl Harbor day first hand is just a part of the past to these newer adults, and not of their own lifetime at all.
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