NEWARK, Del.

--On Dec. 7, I was privileged to present the Pearl Harbor remembrance address at the Navy Memorial in Washington. Pearl Harbor survivors, long now in years, were there--all but one in wheelchairs. The lone standing veteran present confided to me afterward about my current book, "Pearl Harbor Christmas," that I had gotten one thing wrong. Adm. Chester Nimitz, who took over command the badly disabled Pacific Fleet at the orders of President Roosevelt, arrived at the east loch of Pearl Harbor at dawn on Christmas Day in a Navy PB2Y flying boat rather than a PBY. He still remembered.

The next printing will fix that. But the important thing is that he remembered, and he went on to ask me, "How long do you think Americans will remember Pearl Harbor? Will that end with my lifetime--or yours?" It was a dismaying question. What in our rather short history will remain in the national memory? And what use will it be?

The generation of World War II avidly read newspapers and listened intently to news on the radio. We learned our geography. Two big oceans separated us 70 years ago from wars across the rest of the world. We were snug and safe as, just after Thanksgiving Day, as usual, many Americans put up Christmas trees and began their holiday buying sprees in brightly lit, extravagantly filled shops. Headlines suggested that war was inching closer as potential enemies grew more and more belligerent in tone; yet they were somewhere else, far from our shores.

We did not know that Washington had sent radio messages to all Pacific bases on Nov. 27, the day after the roast turkey appeared on our tables, beginning, "This is a war warning." The Navy had broken the Japanese diplomatic code. Japanese instructions to distant embassies and consulates included no military clues, but suggested that war coming somewhere.