The Importance of Preserving the Present

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At a recent family gathering, my uncle Ray showed me a scrapbook he had started as a teenager in the early 1940s. “Letters” it says simply on the spine of that ring metal binder. There are tabs for “MOM”, “DON” (my father), “LARRY” (his brother) and “DAD.”

Lovingly pasted into now yellowing pages are the flimsy sheets of letter paper used back then when every ounce counted. In the scrap book are loving letters from his mother (my grandmother Betty) filled with admonitions to “wash your towels every three days,” and to make sure he washies his neck and underarms in the shower. In one letter on July 8, 1943 grandmother writes my uncle about the day my Dad (Don) wore his army uniform for the first time: “(Don) has a little side cap and I must say the whole outfit becomes him. He was strutting around so proudly like a hen that had just laid an egg and didn’t know what was going to happen next.” Or another time when my grandparents were invited to a party in Tokyo that included Princess Takamatsu and the American ambassador to Japan. While everyone else arrived in “dark Cadillacs with uniformed chauffeurs, my grandparents rattled to the entrance to the grand mansion in an old Ford. Grandfather Julie evidently hated the party, saying one such evening was “enough for a lifetime.” But my grandmother dreamed of a day when her son Don, my dad, would move in such circles exchanging small talk with important people. But, of course, like his father, Dad hated such parties. Then there is the letter my grandmother sent the day after I was born demanding my uncle send her $5. Apparently she had bet my uncle that I would be a boy. “I sang and whooped1” wrote my grandmother.

In doing research for Yokohama Yankee, I didn’t have access to this scrapbook. But I had access to many other letters and memoirs. And that got me thinking. What will my great grandchildren read if they want to know more about my generation. In this day of email and Facebook–where important messages are buried among so many trivial words–how can we preserve the memories that the next generation might find useful? It is something I will ponder about. For while I have written much about the past, I say little about the present even though we are going through more momentous changes now than just about any time in history. So what should we be doing to leave behind snapshots of our age, the way way think, the lessons we learn. Or does it even matter now that everything is being electronically recorded online and in computers. Then again, how much of that information is on old videotapes or computer discs that our grandkids won’t have access to?

What do you think? Are you making an effort to pass your thoughts on to your kids and grandkids?

 


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