In two books in the 1920s and 1930s, an obscure British naval correspondent named Hector C. Bywater outlined a scenario for both a Japanese invasion of the Pacific beginning with an attack on Pearl harbor and the American island-hopping counterattack (eerie shades of Billy Mitchel). Moving freely in military circles, Bywater once met an up-and-coming Japanese naval officer named Isoroko Yamamoto and discussed war and naval strategy over a bottle of scotch. According to William H. Honan of the New York Times, Bywater's biographer, Bywater's death in 1940 under mysterious circumstances may have been "ordered by Yamamoto as he planned the assault on Pearl Harbor to rid himself of the one man in the West who knew exactly what the Japanese navy would do when war broke out." (See Visions of Infamy, St. martin's Press 1991).

Such is another haunting specimen of World War II lore.

This Dec. 7 is the 59th anniversary of that infamous day that plunged the US into the Second World War. Many older Levittowners remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in a way that renders the often-quoted JFK assassination memories of Baby Boomers trivial. Dec. 7, 1941 was a line of demarcation in the lives of my parent's generation. Before that was the numbing deprivation of the Great Depression. Thereafter was a rite of passage by fire and a young adulthood that was characterized by unprecedented opportunity. They called it the "American Dream" and its physical incarnation was our very own world famous Levittown. I doubt that the most vindicated seer on Dec. 7, 1941 could have foretold of life in Levittown on Dec. 7, 1951; ten years and a world away.

As far off as Pearl Harbor seems today, its lesson is timeless and universal and for this reason must never be forgotten. With this in mind, the Levittown Historical Society is hosting a visit from the Pearl Harbor Survivor's Association on Dec. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Levittown Public Library. It's not often in our everyday lives we get to hear someone present at such a significant event in world history describe what they saw and experienced. Unique among us, the men of the Pearl Harbor Survivor's Association don't have to stop and recall where they were when they heard about the Japanese attack the way our parents and grandparents do. Nor do they need to recall in what history book, movie, or television program they first learned about the "day of infamy." They were there.

There is something profound about the recollections of such men. One day Dec. 7, 1941 will belong entirely to the ages . There will come a time when there is nobody alive who ever knew anyone who remembered Pearl Harbor as anything other than an historical event. And this will be the case forevermore until the end of time.