A DAY THAT WILL LIVE...
Those words are still strong enough in the memory of all people who were living in America when the Japanese – without warning – hit Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, a principal naval base of the United States, with a devastating air raid. It was costly in terms of lives lost, persons injured, property destroyed, and a tremendous loss of sea power for our Pacific Fleet. There was loss of prestige which affected us more than any one thing and caused us to become outward, serious participants in the World War already in progress at the time, and not doing too well.
It is of vital importance that we realize that there are thousands of citizens who do not remember or revere the memory of those who did that day in defense of the nation in which we live today. This is not the fault of theirs but, rather, of our own failure to provide an educational system which would pass along such essential information to new generations to provide an awareness of our national history. I made a dental appointment last year and when I thanked her for giving such an easy date to recall: “That’s good! I can remember ‘Pearl Harbor Day’.” Obviously puzzled, she looked and offered to change the date : “if you folks are taking a ocean trip!” Just this last week I was talking with a man born in 1981 We spoke of colonial Virginia travel and, at the age of twenty-five, he asked me what I meant by “Livery Stable?”
The plight we are in concerning poor or inadequate study of our past will catch us some day. The event which took place yesterday at the White House commits us to a lead role in a conflict far larger than the war in which we are engaged at the moment.
The prestige factor alone might prove to be rather more cost than we one would think. When Japan used just two hundred "Zeros"to cripple Pearl Harbor and our Pacific fleet many nations around the Pacific rim faced new and foreboding possibilities. We now have nations on what we might call the "Arabic Rim" who will be looking to us to right their understandable imbalance.
December 7th- more or less - may well be given extended meanings for all of us soon.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 12-07-06 [c402wds]
