Remember Pearl Harbor
[NOTE: This is a somewhat-edited version of a previous post.]
Today is the eighty-first anniversary of the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. The generation that reacted to it by mobilizing and fighting World War II is on its very ancient last legs and nearly gone. But they were the ones we still call “the Greatest.”
I was reminded of this a few years ago while watching one of those Oliver North “War Stories” TV shows about Pearl Harbor. It featured some of the elderly participants reminiscing about that long-ago day. Before each one spoke, there was a photograph of him back in 1941: young, vibrant, handsome, full of life. Now they were ancient, and most only vaguely resembled their former selves. But they still transmitted great moral strength and a kind of Gary-Cooperesque stoicism and understated bravery as they told their stories.
Back on the 75th anniversary there were still quite a few WWII veterans alive:
The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t have data on veterans of individual battles, and an alumni association for the battle disbanded in 2011, at the 70th anniversary, when it believed just 8,000 of the 84,000 uniformed Americans on Oahu during the attack remained alive. Since 2011, roughly half of veterans of World War II who were alive then have died, according to VA projections, leaving fewer than 700,000 alive today. Roughly 400 American WWII veterans die each day.
Obviously the number of Pearl Harbor veterans alive was small then and has only gotten smaller since that was written—as it will every year until the number is zero. And then, we will still remember? In fact, do most of us remember Pearl Harbor even now?
I’m not really sure what our younger generation today remembers, or wishes to remember – or through what strange leftist prism it will be taught to remember that day if it’s taught at all.
Here’s a post I published fourteen years ago on Pearl Harbor Day. It focuses on FDR’s famous speech afterward, and the will and resolve he amply demonstrated.
Here’s just a little bit of Roosevelt’s post-Pearl Harbor speech, because we need reminding of what American resolve used to sound like:
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
“Righteous might.”
Here’s the speech itself:
The memorable phrase that began FDR’s address, “a date which will live in infamy,” wasn’t in Roosevelt’s earlier draft. That draft read “a date which will live in world history.” That sounds like a high school essay; Roosevelt crossed out “world history” and added “infamy” in his own hand. He also changed “simultaneously and deliberately attacked” to “suddenly and deliberately attacked.”
Wise choices by FDR.
Pretty sure that if the history of Pearl Harbor is taught in American schools going forward, it will portrayed as we had it coming because we were racosts.
My father detested the phrase “The Greatest Generation.”
A side note: My brother told me his daughter, seeing a picture of Dad in uniform (USN pilot), said “Grandad was really handsome. What happened to you.”
At the museum at Pearl Harbor there’s the draft of FDR’s speech with his handwritten edit inserting the “day of infamy” phrase…pretty amazing to see. It’s not predominately displayed, I just chanced on it walking by, then was stopped in my tracks.
Marine Grandfather got purple heart ww1 fighting in France. Was working at Pearl Harbor shipyard when it was bombed. Seventeen years old, I worked at San Francisco Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Co-worker was Batann Death march survivor. I was too ignorant to understand, thought he was some kind of parade guy.
WW2 Marine Uncle killed Japanese in the pacific. Married my Japanese “aunt” in early fifties. They mostly lived and worked in other countries due to understandable hostility here. Back in those days, everybody had a friend, relative, or classmate who died in the war, just like most of us boomer/geezers here.
I work with a bunch of kids. I can call them that because they’re either younger than, or about the same age, as my actual kids who are in their ’30’s.
I did an informal poll this morning because I was curious…”do you know the significance of this date in US history?” One knew right away. the other 4 had no idea. One got it to “something about WWII” when I gave the hint “A date which will live in infamy” but that was as close as any of the rest of them got.
We talked about it a bit and they did learn about it in history class, but it obviously wasn’t covered with nearly the zeal it was when I was in school…of course that was 50 some years ago and it was much fresher in collective memory then. At any rate, to them, they said it was ancient history…it was no different to them than learning about Waterloo or Gettysburg…interesting but not relevant to their lives, so it just wasn’t something they carried with them.
I think that’s just the nature of the passage of time. Although we still remember and study events long before our time, it just doesn’t carry the emotional impact of something that we can directly relate to. I’d say WWI was like that for me. I knew about it, and I had relatives who fought in it, but none that I knew so it just didn’t have the same emotional impact.
When I was a kid, I heard story after story directly from WWII vets about their experiences. My great uncle Cecil was wounded in the Pacific theater and had a purple heart…I believe he’d been awarded a bronze star as well, but I’m not sure about that. Our insurance salesman when I was a kid had been in a tank crew in the 5th Armored Division and that dude could spin a yarn*. Our small town barber was a P-51 pilot toward the end of the war and had 4 air to air “kills”. He said the war ending was bittersweet for him because it meant he never had a chance for that coveted “Ace” title. Those are the ones I remember the most. Hearing those stories directly from the mouths of the people who lived them made it seem real to me. The younger generations don’t have that. The vast majority of WWII vets are gone now and the kids these days just don’t have any kind of personal connection to it. Heck, most of them were babies on 9/11 and don’t have any real recollection of that.
Now I really feel old.
*Our Insurance salesman always carried a small smooth stone in his pocket. Nothing special, just a stone like you’d find in the bed of a stream. He loved to pull it out and proclaim that this stone made him rich because he wouldn’t sell it to anyone for less than a million dollars. He said he may not have another penny in his pocket but as long as he had that stone he could rest easy because he was a millionaire. He was quite a character.
I’d like to ask my granddaughters if they’ve heard of it. Kind of reluctant. My son and his wife are trying to keep them innocent–ages eleven and fifteen.
Ditto Holocaust and 9-11
I was eight. My brothers were 5 and 12. We three gathered with our parents around the family radio to listen to FDR’s speech. I knew it was serious because both my dad and mom were very quiet and intense. Afterwards my brothers and I were in our room talking about what it meant. We knew our lives were going to change. And they did.
My dad tried to enlist but didn’t pass the physical. Men all over town (a mountain village of some four to five hundred full time residents) were enlisting or being called up to serve.
My dad and a friend heard about big money being paid for electricians at a Naval base being constructed at Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho. Many other men left for construction jobs that paid high wages. By the middle of 1942 there were few men between 18 and 55 left in town. And that was the way things stayed until 1946.
Word of a local man being wounded or killed came. Gold Stars began to appear in a few windows. We knew that behind those windows there was immense sadness and pain. People looked out for one another. There weas a deep sense of being all in it together. We were all family.
Older men took up jobs they thought they had retired from. My grandfather (on my mother’s side) was 65 and he was back doing electrician’s work. Summer jobs for kids were always available. I worked as a paperboy, log peeler, my grandfather’s assistant, dug ditches, and cleaned stalls at a stable over the four years. Work was expected from kids. We all had to do our part.
We held paper drives, collected scrap metal, saved bacon grease, and bought savings bonds. My mother complained about rationing, but we knew it was a necessary part of winning the war.
We saw the war news at the theater on Saturdays when they played the Movietone News. My grandfather kept a map on the wall and made notes on it as the war progressed. He had a fifth-grade education but was a self-educated man.
Pilots and navigators’ who were training in the B-29s at Lowry Air Force Base spent weekend leaves in our town. They were all nice young men, but they also knew they were headed for something big. (They flew the B-29s to Tokyo at the end of the war.) They had a need to have fun and forget where they were going. My first experience of military men who knew they were going in harm’s way.
Yes, I remember Pearl Harbor, and what came after. We rose to the challenge as a nation. We were different then. Less wealthy, and more resilient. Leaner and more willing to endure difficult times. Wiser and surer of who we were. We’re not those things today.
Fullmoon mentions the hostility of some Americans toward his uncle’s Japanese wife. My dad served in the North African/European Theater from 1942 (Operation Torch) through the Allied advance into Germany in 1945, while Uncle Bob was sent to the China-Burma-India Theater (only 2% of U.S. servicemen in WWII were assigned to the CBI), so I did not experience as much popular anger against the Japanese as some other commenters here.
I did learn something interesting, though, about Mitsuo Fuchida (1902–1976), the Japanese pilot who led the first wave of air attacks on Pearl Harbor as well as leading the air attack on Darwin, Australia, in February 1942 and later being wounded at the Battle of Midway. Although Fuchida was angry about the outcome of the 1947 Japanese war crimes trials, regarding it as “victors’ justice,” he interviewed returning Japanese POWs and was surprised to find that they had been treated well by their American captors. Fuchida became curious about Christianity in particular when he read a pamphlet about Jacob DeShazer, a pilot in the Doolittle Raid who had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and tortured. DeShazer had been an atheist but had a conversion experience in the camp and eventually became a Christian missionary in Japan. Fuchida decided to read the Bible for himself, became a Christian in 1949, and met DeShazer in 1950. Fuchida became a Christian evangelist himself and visited the United States several times, though he never applied for citizenship. He died in Japan in 1976 of complications of diabetes.
“Yes, I remember Pearl Harbor, and what came after. We rose to the challenge as a nation. We were different then. Less wealthy, and more resilient. Leaner and more willing to endure difficult times. Wiser and surer of who we were. We’re not those things today.” JJ
No we’re not and perhaps this meme explains it as well as any other explanation:
“Hard Times Create Strong Men,
Strong Men Create Good Times,
Good Times Create Weak Men,
Weak Men Create Hard Times”
My dad was 7 years old in October of 1929. He remembers bread lines and the family going an entire week with only rice to eat. At 18 he joined the army, gaining permission to join by persuasively arguing with my reluctant grandfather that war was coming with Hitler and that he had a better chance of surviving with the training he’d get, by joining early rather than waiting until War erupted. My grandfather remembered World War I Army inductees training with wooden rifles. Dad’s uncle buried himself in a snow bank, when his battalion was cut off behind German lines to escape capture. He lost a lung doing so.