A Day to Remember, a Day to Forget

Abstract

7 December 1941—the date of Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor—was a life-altering moment for a generation of Americans. It has been seared into the nation's collective memory with the blazing epitaph, “a day of infamy.” In American popular imagination, Pearl Harbor has been inducted into the pantheon of historic war cries “to remember,” along with the Alamo and the Maine. But just what that infamy entailed and how it is represented and interpreted has evolved, sometimes imperceptibly, often dramatically, in the last sixty years. In this compelling study of history and memory, Emily Rosenberg examines in illuminating detail how Pearl Harbor and its legacy have been constructed and circulated in a variety of media as well as in public pronouncements and commemorative venues in the United States. She studies disparate ways Americans have chosen to remember this cataclysmic turning point in their nation's history and a multitude of lessons they have drawn from it. The result of her meticulous scholarly craftsmanship, informed by the latest literature on historical memory, is a fully textured exegesis of this secular American icon, and a chronicle of societal developments that contributed to Pearl Harbor's renewed visibility in American culture in the last few decades. The book concludes with a critical look at the terrifyingly reflexive use of Pearl Harbor as a framing device for the events on 11 September 2001.