On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They destroyed naval ships and airplanes, killed hundreds of sailors and personnel, and forced the United States into the Second World War. That day would always be, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack will forever live in the memories of the country and its citizens. However, these memories differ for various reasons, which is my project’s argument. People who have visited the memorial might have different memories of the event compared to people who only learned about it in school or had a family member serve in the war. This project hopes to show that people have different memories of the event and create a conversation around those memories.

I created a contribution element on the website to create this conversation around memories. Users can share their stories or images to contribute to the overall discussion. I have also added a section on both the stories and image contributions that asks users if they know anyone who served during that time or was there during the attack and if they have stories to share about them or if they told stories to them they would like to share. What people remember about their family members’ stories affects their memory of learning about the attack, so I added that feature for those people to share to create a more varied and rich conversation. While the project focuses on the memorial and remembrance of the event, there will be users who have not necessarily visited the memorial or have little knowledge of the event and want to learn more. The project has three exhibits to provide a memorial and historical background for those wishing to learn more before contributing. These exhibits are also there for the secondary audience of people researching the event or memorial. These exhibits hopefully provide an opportunity for people to learn more, and those contributions will discuss their prior or nonexistent memories and what they have learned while exploring the site. For example, one user only has prior knowledge from what they learned in high school. They looked through the exhibits and learned more than they had in school. In the contribution section, they discussed their prior knowledge and how learning more about it changed their views and memories of the attack.

I will look at the contributions themselves to see if these elements are performing as I want them to. If they provide various voices with rich conversations, I know they are performing well. However, there is a chance that the conversation is not varied or rich. At that point, I will see if it is a problem with outreach or if the forms on the contribution page need to be tweaked to allow for more varied conversations. Tweaking the contribution forms could mean changing the wording so users can understand the questions better or adding more elements or questions. When it comes to the exhibits, there are two ways I can see if they are performing well. One way is to look at the contributions and see if some mention the exhibits. Another way is to look at the views that the exhibits receive. If there are a lot of views, not just of the main page but also of the following pages, I know that users are looking at them and are appealing enough to look through the entire exhibit. If there are not that many views or many views on the main page but not on the following pages, they are either not appealing enough and more needs to be added, or more advertising of these exhibits is needed.