Pearl Harbor
Remembrance Day
The quotation is from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. The poster was issued by the US Government Printing Office in 1942, a year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
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Header: The USS Arizona burns after being hit by a Japanese bomb while U.S. sailors aboard the neighboring USS Tennessee spray fire hoses to force burning oil away from their ship during the air attack in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. From the U.S. Department of Defense.
Boy, did the Japanese make big mistake ?!!!!!
A tragedy for everyone. War always is.
Thanks for the memory, but this one is fading. The history of the U.S.A., like that of the world, is one of frequent war. The last 49 years have been an exception. We are overdue and we just elected an impetuous, narcissistic sociopath as president in a nuclear-armed world.
Cold comfort knowing I didn’t vote for him. But yes, the US has unleashed him on the world a second time. The clock is ticking …
December 7 raises several thoughts for me. Wasn’t that the day that would live in infamy? Perhaps to some extent it still is, but I suspect that in many minds it has been supplanted by September 11.
It was also the day that precipitated the U.S. entry into the war. Broadly speaking, Americans were enraged and motivated, and my uncle Maurice, among many others, headed right down to the Marine recruiting office. (My Dad and another uncle were already in the service, Dad in the Army and uncle Archie in the Navy).
And December 7 also kicked off the poorly thought-out internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps all around the West. Now, there’s some infamy for you! The camp at Manzanar, if you ever travel that way, is worth a visit – a monument and a museum. This month’s Smithsonian carries a long story about that internment, and how some Americans (not enough) chose to help some of the Japanese to preserve their homes and farms while they were gone. I suppose in today’s political climate, we should just be happy they weren’t deported.
Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Human nature being what it is, I’m afraid the repetition will continue whether or not we remember. Is it better to remember our history by preserving places like Manzanar and Wounded Knee or tear them down because they they remind us of when we were oppressors? Better to remember the Civil War by preserving battlefields and building monuments or bury them all and pretend that war never happened? Try to remember or try to forget? Not to mention the sticky question of whose version should be remembered …
a day that should never be forgotten
That was the last time the US got pulled into a world war. Worth remembering, I’d say.