FOR PEARL HARBOR VETS IT'S STILL A DAY OF INFAMY.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.'' - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's war message to Congress.

When the invitations come, which is not often these days, Bill Aupperlee walks into the den of his North Hollywood home and takes down one of his most cherished possessions hanging on the wall - an oil painting of the battleship USS Ralph Talbot.

The 83-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor puts the painting of the ship he served on at the outbreak of World War II in the back seat of his car, and drives off to a high school somewhere in the San Fernando Valley to show it to some teen-age kids.

Kids who have teachers who want them to know more about this date in history - a day that a great president promised a worried nation would live in infamy.

But it hasn't.

If anything, the national pulse grows weaker every year, remembering the rallying cry for the United States in World War II: ``Remember Pearl Harbor!''

You don't have to look any farther than Bill Aupperlee's den to see that. The painting of the USS Ralph Talbot remains up on his wall today.

On a day he should be booked solid talking to school kids about what Pearl Harbor meant to this country, this past president of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association has only one stop to make: an hour on a local talk radio show.

No schools called looking for some perspective for their students on this day of infamy from someone who was there. Too bad. In a few years, it may be too late.

Aupperlee's generation is slowly fading from the scene. A couple of years ago, there were 12,500 members in the survivor's association nationally. Today, it's slipped below 9,000.

His own local chapter has fallen to 44 men, but only eight or nine really get involved and do anything anymore, he says.

When they're gone who's going to keep FDR's words alive?

``I'm 83. How much longer can I go?'' Aupperlee asks. ``The survivors of Pearl are dying off, and it looks like this country hasn't learned a darn thing, as far as keeping America alert so we never have another day of infamy like that.''

When he looks out from the podium today, as Van Nuys American Legion Post 193 hosts its annual Veterans Remembrance Day at 10 a.m. at the veterans memorial in Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park, Bill Glass hopes he sees a lot of new, younger faces in the audience, but he knows he won't.

He will see the same faces. A few politicians, some active military personnel in uniform, and a lot of retired veterans with their spouses.

All the people old enough to remember.

``I think anybody living at that time still remembers where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor,'' says Glass, past president of the local legion chapter.

``I was a junior in high school in Oklahoma City, driving around on a Sunday afternoon when I heard it on the radio,'' he said. ``Pearl Harbor and the day JFK was shot - two days we'll always remember where we were.''

If you were alive and old enough, that's the problem. A growing chunk of the population isn't.

To most of the kids in high school today, Pearl Harbor is not a date that will live in infamy. It's a paragraph in a history book that will be forgotten right after the test is over.

Unless they get lucky and Bill Aupperlee walks into their classroom with that oil painting of his.

Sometimes you walk away feeling like a million bucks, Aupperlee says. You know from the rapt look on their young faces that you got to them.

You turned that paragraph in a history book into something they could understand, even enjoy learning about. A virtual reality action game.

Live human beings - boys not much older than they are right now - looking up at the sky on Dec. 7, 1941, and seeing hundreds of rising suns swooping down at them in a sneak attack.

You tell them about the buddies who didn't make it home from battleships like the one in the oil painting you are holding in your hands.

You tell them they may not realize it, but America wasn't always the way it is now - strong, the toughest kid on the block.

We had our knees buckled badly on this day 58 years ago, got slapped with a real gut check. But when the smoke finally cleared four years later, it was our guys dictating the terms of surrender, not theirs.

You tell them they don't want to even think about what it would have been like today the other way around.

So, that's what this day of infamy is all about, kids. Keeping your eyes open, keeping the country strong so it can't happen again.

Paying homage to guys like Bill Aupperlee, just waiting for an invitation to take his oil painting off the wall and keep FDR's words alive for another generation.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo: (color) Survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor are, from left, George Keene, Bill Aupperlee, Joe Mariani, Ray Kuhlow and Leon Kolb.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer