70 years ago today the Japanese launched their sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor in the US Territory of Hawaii. This action forced the United States into WWII.
There are entire forests of trees turned to paper written about Pearl Harbor. I have nothing to add. If you want to learn more I recommend you head to the library or your favorite bookstore and get a copy of Gordon Prange's epic history At Dawn We Slept.
I intend to watch Tora,Tora, Tora this evening.
Seventy years. For the youth of today WWII and Pearl Harbor are as remote as The Spanish American War was to my brother and I or the Civil War to our Grandparents. History stands still, time marches on.
My great-grandfather was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He died before I was born, but my Grandmother was active in the Spanish-American War Auxiliary. She always wanted my brother and I to go with her to the National Conventions. I met some Span-Am Veterans, including some of the last ones alive. She wanted us to read at Veteran's Day Ceremonies. For a young me it was just a bunch of old people. I was too young to understand history is not in books, but rather people.
The people of WWII are dying fast. In a few years we will be reading stories of the last veteran passing away, just like the men of WWI or the Civil War. We are thirty-five years removed from Vietnam.
More died at Pearl Harbor than on 9/11. The national shock was just as severe, perhaps more so. The news of the day was print and radio, there were no live shots from CNNABCNBCCBS to keep the public informed. The horror arrived in pictures and newsreels.
Today will come and go, its passing just another mile marker on history's highway. The importance of the date dimmed by time. In another generation, WWII will be just more battles, another war, fodder for movies and stories. Pearl Harbor will just be a place mentioned in a history book like Waterloo or Trafalgar.
Pearl Harbor was the defining memory for an entire generation of Americans. Over the time of history it will become just like the speed bump in the grocery store parking lot. It will slowly shrink from memory until we barely notice it.
But for today, we will remember and honor those who gave their lives for Freedom. December 7, 1941. A date that will live in infamy.
8 comments:
Six months later, though, we found out we were going to win the war.
For every failure at Pearl Harbor, there was a corresponding success at Midway. Certainly there was a long war still ahead, but Midway was the tipping point.
I've long thought that Pearl Harbor and Midway were the logical descendants of, say, the Wilderness, and Gettysburg. At the earlier battle, Lee and Yamamoto displayed their great talents as tacticians and strategists. Yet at the latter battles, Lee and Yamamoto both lacked their characteristic drive and vigor, refused to heed warnings and timely suggestions from subordinates, and were defeated by relative unknowns.
I thought for some time about writing a Master's thesis on the comparison of command and control at Midway and Gettysburg -- both "high tide" battles for the previously-unbeatable side. But I was told that a military history thesis wouldn't fly well and I didn't come up with any better ideas before I got hired away to the computer industry and let the thesis lapse...
I have never thought of the two different campaigns that way -- the idea is intriguing. The comparisons go even further. Both Japan and the Confederacy were fighting a larger, more industrialized enemy. The North and the US both had a tremendous advantage in natural resources as well.
Lee/Yamamoto both had early success with bold/audacious tactics and strategy, but in the end it was not enough to defeat a determined, organized campaign. Attrition -- in men, resources, and even ideas and tactics defeated both.
Shooting down (assassinating actually) Yamamoto was a brilliant and worthwhile stroke.
You have a worthwhile research/book idea for when you retire!
The Pearl Harbor Association is disbanding the last meeting is this year. There are not enough survivors to continue. History will become more and politically correct until this will eliminated as to graphic for young minds.
James Old Guy
My friend Nate Weiser celebrated is 95th birthday Sunday, and tonight was honored by his Rotary club as it's oldest, it's longest serving member and his Pearl Harbor service.
He went on to serve in Europe where he got the Bronze Star.
I was a terrible student, I barely graduated high school. I hated history and slept through most of it. At some point after school I got very interested in history mostly because of a history series that was on TV during the 70’s called “World At War”, a documentary on WW2. The more I learned about WW2 the more I needed to know and I started reading everything I could find on it. I'm no expert on the subject, but I can never pass a show on TV that is covering some aspect of WW2. In the mid-eighties I had the great fortune to work with a WW2 vet who fought in the African campaign against Rommel's tank command. He was later deployed in the European theater and fought under Patton for a short time. It was just us two in a small monitoring office. We got to be good friends despite the age difference. I got him to talk to me about what it was like in the battlefield. Two things he told me that stand out in my memory to this day, the first was his memory of their adversary German general Erwin Rommel, the “dessert fox” he said, “Rommel chased our ass around North Africa twice before we got the best of him”. The second had to do with finding the mettle in yourself to tamp down the natural self-survival instinct so you can fight effectively in the battlefield he said, “we were young and weren’t scared of dying, our worst fear was getting captured by the Krauts, they were mean son’s-a-bitches”.
Miss you Jack
Thanks for an awesome post, Joe.
The Japanese attack was a huge strategic error. Despite their having destroyed a goodly portion of our Pacific fleet in the attack, the US had the physical and natural resources to rebuild... and then to prosecute the war to its conclusion.
Had the Japanese not attacked, how long would it have taken us to get involved in the Atlantic theatre? With all the clarity of hindsight, we might see the Pearl Harbor attack as a necessary evil in the grand sweep of history... it shaped the world we live in today. But it was a tragedy for the people caught up and crushed in the gears of History - we can never mourn them enough.
I think , if history is a clue, it quite likely the US would not have entered the war until it looked like Britain might fall. Up until that fatefull Sunday morning, there was still a very strong isolationist bent to the American political philosophy. We did not enter WWI until the final stages (and probably turned the tide from an almost certain German victory). I think we would have delayed entry into the Atlantic/European War until at least 1942. That means we would not have had a real impact until at least 1943. Until we entered, Germany never went to a full time "war economy" and was winning on every front.
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