Infamy

Dec. 7, 1941. Infamy.

I was in Honolulu three months shy of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The oil still seeps to the surface of the underwater grave.

And that's what the USS Arizona Memorial is -- a cemetery. It isn't a tourist trap, but that didn't stop the uncouth from treating it as such.

I had been told tales of Japanese tourists taking pictures and grinning from ear to ear like a fisherman holding the biggest bass you've ever seen. Well, it isn't exactly true, at least it wasn't the day I was there.

Several posed for photos, some -- incredulously -- with smiles on their faces, but it was people of all nationalities and races, mostly Americans, I'm ashamed to say.

I wouldn't even wear a hat.

Several survivors were sitting near the visitor's center. We missed the boat on meeting them. By the time we finished the tour, they had gone their merry way. It's too bad. I wanted to say thanks.

And so I do today, to those who fought, to those who remember, to the Greatest Generation, that tough-as-nails special breed of human beings who stared both a Depression and a second World War in the face, beat them both and lived to tell the tale. We'll never see their likes again.

This day will stand with July 4, 1776, and Sept. 11, 2001, as moments no person of goodwill should ever forget. I'd like to think I won't have to add another tragic date to that list, but it will happen, in my lifetime or in another's.

Until then, here's hoping to heaven we always remember, that their service and sacrifice will seep as strong into our souls as does the oil to the water's surface from the underwater graveyard at Pearl Harbor.

Birthdays

I will try to write something more contemplative later today on this, my 35th birthday. I'm too sick and too tired to do so now.

But I am quite pleased to learn that I share a birthday with a journalism milestone. On this date in 1938, the first CBS "World News Roundup" aired on CBS Radio with Robert Trout (at left) broadcasting from New York.

You can hear it here. The Nazis are invading Austria.

The show still airs today, albeit in/with a slightly different format.

Happy birthday, WNR!

My favorite curmudgeon

Sunday nights will never be the same.

Andy Rooney, America's favorite curmudgeon, whose commentaries provided the perfect period for the final moments of "60 Minutes," died Friday night. He was 92.

Barely retired a month (although he said, and I concur, that a writer never retires), Rooney passed away from complications following surgery. He will be missed.

Rooney got his start during World War II, as a reporter for the daily Stars and Stripes newspaper. He said later that being in the war, first as a reluctant soldier, altered his thinking about its necessity. "I saw the Germans," he said, "and I changed my mind."

He came to fame in the final installment on "60 Minutes," complaining about everything from women's hats to flights of stairs. ("They don't take flight.")

But he could also be serious, offering a touching tribute to D-Day, raging against the senseless 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City ("I could kill the bastards!"), mocking the lyrics to Michael Jackson's "Bad."

He said, though, that of all the things about which he could complain, he could never grumble about his life. It was filled with a loving wife, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Not to mention a career to remember, punctuated by those perfect periods at the end of "60 Minutes" on Sunday nights.

Iwo Jima: 'It was slaughter'

In this week's column on page A-6, World War II Marine Ralph Lewis recalls the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Says Ralph, "It was slaughter."

He also recalls seeing the raising of the first, smaller American flag on Mount Suribachi.

'The War'

There is a moment near the end of the first episode of "The War," Ken Burns' brilliant, haunting new documentary on World War II, that sears the soul.

A vet is recalling a moment on Guadalcanal. The fighting became all but guerilla warfare --- close, continuous, hand to hand. Days into the battle, his squad came to rest during the night at a lonely spot in the jungle.

Behind him, the marine heard a gunshot, then a gasp for breath. The wounded man began to moan. It continued deep into the night.

Weary, the marine thought, "Just go ahead and die already. We need the rest."

In the morning, he discovered that the wounded marine, who passed away shortly before dawn, was his best friend.

"You can't imagine," he said, "what it does to you thinking that you wished that your best friend would die."

And so it goes, human stories of this variety, for two and a half hours. "The War" is as stunning as it is honest. Burns chooses to tell the story in microcosm, using the citizens of four towns in California, Minnesota, Connecticut and Alabama. What Burns has created is a stunning indictment of the cruelty of war, but also a reminder of the heights to which human beings can rise.

Critics are yelping that Burns doesn't represent everybody; the holier-than-thou New York Times review all but accuses Burns of jingoism.

They miss the point. A television documentary is limited. It simply can't tell everyone's story. And Burns is a master of telling uniquely American tales --- baseball, the Civil War, jazz. He's not attempting to put forth an exhausting piece on all facets of the war, but rather America's four year chapter of this very bloody affair.

Thinking back to the marine's words, one can't help but be proud of that so-called Greatest Generation. They whipped the depression and, when the time came, they whipped fascism and militarism too.

At its heart, "The War" is a soldier's story. It isn't about MacArthur, Eisenhower, Monty or Patton.

It's about the guy in the jungle, haunted by a buddy's death.

What a story it is.

"The War" airs nightly this week on PBS.