BLOOMINGTON - Photographs tell the story. It's a common remark heard around newsrooms. Readers of the Pantagraph or Pantagraph.com or even the New York Times are familiar with the phrase. | Photo gallery

We have come to accept the idea that photographs define our time and our outlook on the world. They become milestones on our road through life, documenting events that shape who we become.

Dec. 7, 1941, the day President Franklin Roosevelt declared a day of infamy after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, was the great milestone for a generation of Americans who lived through World War II.

Even if you lived in Central Illinois, 4,200 miles from the Hawaiian islands, the war was made all the more real by the media of the day.

The photograph titled "War News" captured a scene that was a common sight in diners and homes throughout the area in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. While radio was an important source for the breaking news announcement, readers scooped up Pantagraphs to digest the entirety of what was happening as America found itself thrust into a war it didn't want.

Stan Miller, a retired Pantagraph camera man, was 14 years old at the time.

"Everybody was talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor," he said. "The newspaper put out an extra edition on Sunday afternoon."

"I was baffled by the entire story," he said. "I didn't know what war meant."

Miller turned 18 in 1945 and was drafted. He served in the U.S. Army and was trained to go into combat in the Pacific, but instead was reassigned to process returning veterans.

"We went through their paperwork and handed out medals," he said.

While readers of Pantagraph.com can look at photographs of local, national or international events almost as they are happening, readers of the Pantagraph in 1941 would wait until Dec. 18, 1941 to see photographs documenting the Japanese attack. Censorship by the military, coupled with the slow technology of the day, meant readers were kept waiting, building an anticipation of what the pictures would show.

Photographs of the explosion of the battleship U.S.S. Arizona would become the symbolic image for the Greatest Generation, much like the images of the fall of the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 are symbolic for us today.

Those images were branded into the mind of millions who went off to war or who served in war production on the home front.

"Everyone studied the newspaper when it came out, wanting to know what was going on with the war," Miller said.

Gulnara Samoilova's photograph of the collapse of the World Trade Towers, Ike Algens' 1963 photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy leaning over the mortally wounded president, and Bruce Weaver's photograph of the 1986 Challenger explosion defined moments in our lives.

We remember where we were when these events occurred. We were changed by Sept. 11 just like Americans were changed by the bombing of the Arizona.

The questions Americans face today aren't much different than the questions our fathers and mothers asked in 1945. The recent film "Flags of Our Fathers" talked of a war at a time when Americans were losing interest and were troubled by the cost of fighting WWII. The premise of the film was one photograph, Joe Rosenthal's famous "Raising of the Flag at Iwo Jima" that helped turn around the war effort.

There is no question the photograph of Marines raising that flag helped sell war bonds and gave Americans hope that the war could be won.

Photographs certainly galvanized Americans into fighting the war on terror today. What we as a nation may be waiting for is the next Joe Rosenthal.

David Proeber is photo editor of the Pantagraph.

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