You should never write an analytical paper in past tense. If you are just sumearizing what happened ( which you shouldn’t be doing if it is a report), past tense is fine, but any kind of formal report should ALWAYS be in literary present tense.

You do not need to write from the perspective of anyone from that time. You should be talking about HOW things are affected by the event, and that can easily be in LP.

goes back to how you want the reader to feel, There is no law on what tense you should use, Write it just like you want to presented, (story, essay, play, ext). Hope this helps you.

www.hamilton.edu/writing/verbs.html

It has information about when to use present and past tense verbs.

Hope it helps! Good luck with your report!