There are a few calendar dates that are burned into the American psyche. Some endure for good and happy reasons. Everybody knows why we celebrate July 4 and December 25. Both are part of our national identity as a free nation, the freest on Earth, founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Others endure for tragic reasons. November 22 saw the assassination of a president and, days later, his alleged killer, much of it brought directly into our living rooms as the first (and only) such event during the television age. September 11 was a horrifying example of murder brought about by men who hated America simply for being America.
Then there’s today. I don’t recall exactly how old I was when the story of Pearl Harbor entered my consciousness; probably about five. The sneak attack on our naval base in Hawaii was simple for a child to understand and still relatively fresh for me, being only one generation removed from that day in 1941. Throughout my youth, I was well aware of the implications of December 7, the same date on which I graduated from U.S. Naval Submarine School 15 years later.
President Franklin Roosevelt rightly called December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” But living memories of those who survived that attack, which left some 2,400 men and women dead, are fast disappearing. Fewer than two dozen men who lived through that hell are reckoned to be alive today, and it would be a shame if our observance of Pearl Harbor Day died with them.
There is an official Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. It took more than half a century for Congress to designate it as such in 1994. Most of the ceremonies honoring the living and the dead are held in Hawaii, a state most of us have never visited. As an event that is separated from our culture by time and geography, the risk of losing the lessons of Pearl Harbor deserves consideration.
December 7 unified the nation in an unprecedented way. An estimated 134,000 men enlisted in the military within a month of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Within a year, the nation expanded its industrial capacity to the extent that about 50 million people - more than a third of the American population - was working in support of the war effort. The most prescient observation came from the man who masterminded the attack itself, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. He wrote in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Yamamoto could not have been more right. Pearl Harbor ushered in a long and bloody war, the use of nuclear weapons, and set the stage for the decades-long Cold War between the ideologies of liberty and communist tyranny. The four years following December 7, 1941, showed the power of American patriotism, determination, and grit. But the aftermath of the global conflagration that was World War II also showed how the defeated enemies of America could rebuild and become our allies. The fact that America demonstrated generosity and goodness after Japan demonstrated evil and skullduggery is remarkable in and of itself.
We remember and honor those killed on December 7. Thousands of senior officers, civilians, and teenage boys in dungarees and dixie cups were killed on that Sunday morning. They were the first Americans to die in World War II, some while fighting back, and many others who never had that chance. But the men who survived that attack did fight back. They were among the 16 million men and women who defended America in uniform, all of whom did so because of Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor Day and the events that followed remind us of how truly good America can be. We can be tough, valorous, indefatigable, compassionate and forgiving. Reflecting on these qualities raises the question of whether we can do that today. It’s an honest question given that we, as a nation, can’t even agree on whether it’s okay to murder a corporate CEO on a Manhattan street, or imprison a good Samaritan for coming to the aid of New York City subway commuters.
This is not to say we must all agree on all things; quite the contrary. Nobody with any sense of history, who has learned from past societies in which all people agreed on all things, would want to live in such a nation. But the events of December 7, 1941, showed that Americans can be unified. In this unity, the United States prevailed in a way not seen in human history.
There is a powerful memory surrounding December 7. It is the responsibility of the living to keep this memory alive, to impart the meaning of it to future generations, and to remind us all of the strength that sprouts from a nation united.