A few weeks ago I attended a Pearl Harbor commemoration. It was filled with veterans and people from local historical societies.  The young people who were there were middle aged people. I surveyed the room and noticed one other young person. He was a friend of mine who attended because his father was in the Color Guard. I was the other young person there, I am not counting the media who recorded the event.

As I was sitting there listening and watching, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Where are the college students?” Where are the History Majors? Certainly some are at school in the middle of the day, but not every college student. There are a good number of institutions of higher education in the area so there should have been more people than just my friend and me.

Okay fine, so not everybody who cares about current events and history and one’s own country are history majors. They too did not appear. So I wonder, how much do these people care about our recent past? Do they care about only what is in the history books? That can’t sustain itself. Here are veterans from Okinawa, living and breathing pieces of history. When it is time to add their stories, our children and children’s children will ask, “Where were you when history was still alive?” And how would these young people respond? “I was in class” or “I was at work”. Learning and useful information does not always occur in structured environs. To be alive is to be a student. I implore you to be invested in your own lives by contacting your local Elks, Masons, American Legion, American Legion Auxiliary, Historical Society, Daughters of the Revolution, Sons of the Revolution, etc to learn.