Lest We Forget

Explosion aboard U.S.S. Shaw at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

Today is the Date which will live in infamy.

I've two thoughts on this particular anniversary, one more serious, one not so much.

The first is that immediately after 9/11, many people characterized the attacks as modern day equivalents of Pearl Harbor. But as national attention waivered and partisan politics began infecting the issue, many abandonded this parallel, some even turning to mock it openly. Me, I still think it perfectly valid, and not just in the obvious similarity of the surprise attacks. Admiral Yamamoto knew - all too keenly - that unless the attack on Pearl utterly destroyed the American fleet and so crushed the American spirit that we would immediately sue for peace, then in the end it would actually doom Japan itself because there was simply no way that Japan could take on the awesome military, industrial and economic might of an enraged United States in a protracted conflict. I think we're seeing much the same kind of thing now, albeit on a far more limited scale: whether Osama was just going for a cheap publicity stunt or whether he really believed the United States would crumple under a sneak attack on the homeland, for six years now the American war machine has been slowly, patiently and relentlessly hunting down and destroying the bad guys. We need only keep our resolve, and I believe that ultimately we, too, will be victorious. (Yes things are complicated, yes it's a different kind of war, yadda, yadda. But the principle remains the same. As for complications, I'd also point out that the first U.S. troop landings after the Japanese attack occured in.....Morocco. Perhaps FDR was holding the map upside down.) (And speaking of parallels, I've read several recent histories that argue Japan was pushed into attacking Pearl by the ever-expanding Yankee Imperialist hegemony that was threatening to destroy the Japanese way of life. Sound a-tall familiar?)

Oh, and the less serious point. On a note of felicitous timing, I happen to have Tora! Tora! Tora! wending its way to me from Netflix. Not only is this movie a very good depiction of the events leading up to and including the attack on Pearl, it also contains some of the best durn ariel movie stunts of all time. My favorite, I think, is where the B-17 has to do a touch and go with Zeros swarming all round it. When I was a kid, I went to several air shows put on by the Confederate Air Force, a group that preserved and flew WWII vintage aircraft. They used to do that stunt, sometimes with only one wheel down on the B-17. With all the smoke bombs going off around the runway, it was an awesome display.