Saluting The Greatest Generation
Survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack gather officially for the last time, to be honored by Tom Brokaw
By Chad Pata
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Tom Brokaw
mid-80s now and there are mentoring programs and they go down to Legion Hall and help out. It was a can-do generation, it really was. So I want to pay tribute to that, and that is the legacy that we all have inherited, and we need to be mindful of that.”
Brokaw embodies that spirit, though, as a product of that generation, he was born the year before the Pearl Harbor attack, rather than as a member of it.
Raised in a small town in South Dakota, he kept his middle American roots even as he rose to the top of the news world. Easygoing and optimistic, Americans identified with his delivery through the Today Show in the late ‘70s to when he took the anchor chair in 1983 for NBC Nightly News.
His ascension marked the high-water point for the network anchor, when Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Brokaw were elevated from just talking heads reading the news to a star status with all the wealth and trappings that accompany it.
Brokaw stood atop the three, though, bringing in the highest ratings and some of the biggest stories. But now with the passing of Jennings, the unceremonious dumping of Rather and the retirement of Brokaw, the era of the mega-anchor seems to be gone for good.
“It’s never going to be what it once was,” Brokaw says. “Dan, Peter and I were probably the last of that breed of anchor because we had been there a long time and we took the country through so many different changes.
Everett Hyland was aboard the USS Pennsylvania on Dec. 7
and won a Purple Heart
“It wasn’t until the tail end of our careers that all the cable networks began to emerge, and the Internet began to emerge as competition. It’s a much more crowded universe than it used to be.
“But for the foreseeable future when there is a big crisis of some kind, God forbid another 9/11 or beginning of a war or Katrina, people do turn to these anchors, but there are just more of them. Brian (Williams, current NBC Nightly News anchor) and I have talked about this. He is not just competing with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, but with Fox anchors in the evening, Anderson Cooper, Paula Zhan.”
All the new faces are not a bad thing for the media, for as Brokaw sees it they are a much more inquisitive crew now than when he was first breaking into the business. This despite a White House that was hellbent on keeping their inquiries quieted.
“We went through a period, in the immediate post 9/11 time period and the beginning of the war in Iraq, where there was an intent at intimidation, but in the end I don’t think it succeeded,” says Brokaw, who retired after the election in 2004.
“If you watch the daily press briefings in the White House, I
don’t think the White House press corp is too timid. It was, frankly, a lot cozier when I first got into the business, and it was a hell of lot cozier during the Roosevelt era and the Truman era. It’s a lot more robust now than it has been in the past.”
This said, he still sees great need for changes in Washington. In a recent speech Brokaw gave at the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, he said, “On Nov. 7, Americans began to say ... enough. There were three parties: Republican, Democrat and what I call the ‘fed up’ party. Guess which one won?”
Pearl Harbor veteran Zenji Abe (right), a dive bomber who
flew off the Akagi to attack Pearl Harbor, pictured here
with fellow Japanese aviators Taisuke Maruyama and
Kaname Harada, will be a featured speaker at the
symposium
Part of the fervor he has for the “greatest generation” is its attachment to the country as a whole, its desire to get its hands dirty. Politicians these days are experiencing a disconnect that he would like to see fixed.
“My big concern in recent years has been that the national political arena - running for office, Congressional incentive levels, running for president - has become such a big money game,” says Brokaw.
“It’s so walled off from real people that we have lost touch with who we are. One of the questions I have been posing as I go around the country is ‘What do you think people in the Al Jazeera audience think of democracy as it is practiced in America?’
“The kind of ads we have, the amount of money they spend on these races, the amount of money they have to raise while they are in office, the prominent place of K Street lobbyists in Washington. We have some real examination to do in terms of reforms.”
Two years removed from his anchor chair and Brokaw still is looking to make a difference, though when people refer to it as retirement he shakes off the idea.
“That was always the wrong word, it was more of a shifting of gears. But the idea was to shift into lower gears, and I seemed to have shifted into a higher gear,” says Brokaw.
Indeed he has, with seven full-length documentaries, writing in Men’s Journal and covering the election for NBC, retirement has been anything but relaxing. Yet he still squeezes in time to spend on his ranch in Montana to catch up on a little bird hunting and fly fishing.
Next Thursday is not about him, but about the thousands who gave so much to serve their country. As the approximately 1,500 survivors get together for a final farewell, Brokaw and Martinez both hope that future generations will remember what they gave up for them.
“It’s a chance for people to say, ‘My grandfather was one special guy and I want to be with him and have that memory,’” says Martinez.
For more information, visit www.nps.gov/usar/index.htm and click on Pearl Harbor 65th anniversary events, or call (808) 422-0561.
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