Cultures of Commemoration

This chapter focuses on the ceremonial activities that take place in and around the memorial to commemorate the Pearl Harbor attack and related events. After an analysis of the ritual politics of military ceremony, the chapter relates the story about the way that the author was enlisted by a number of Japanese veterans’ intent on organizing transnational commemorative activities bringing Japanese and American veterans together in acts of reconciliation. Involvement in those activities brings home the book’s core arguments that, first, memorial memory is thoroughly social, and, second, that the most public official histories are surrounded by diverse alternative histories that leave behind their own influences on memory, even if not inscribed in memorial architecture. This chapter’s longitudinal sketch of annual rites of remembrance on December 7^th illuminates shifts in commemorative culture such as the effects of the September 11 attacks.