Sixty-Four Years Ago Today
Today is the 64th anniversary of the "date that will live in infamy."
On Dec. 7, 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers positioned 200 miles north of Oahu launched 181 attack planes toward the slowly waking port of Pearl Harbor and at U.S. military airfields elsewhere on the island. The two- stage attack killed 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians -- men, women and children.
Infamy, yes. Memory, perhaps not.
The anniversary of such an event should not pass unnoticed. I looked for stories today on the CNN and Fox websites. Nothing. I looked in Newsday, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Nothing.
Attacked - suddenly, no warning - by a nation we were not at war with. Sound familiar?
I would hate to think that 60 years from now the annivesary September 11, 2001 will be noted by nothing more than small paragraphs in small town newspapers.
It seems almost absurd that this day, this date of infamy, would see the front page of media websites and newspapers boast headlines about Paris Hilton and the Miss World contest with no mention at all of Pearl Harbor. I thought one of the things we - meaning all Americans - took from that terrible incident was this: Never Forget.
So have we forgotten? Will we eventually forget 9/11 as well? Perhaps many years from now the 3,000 dead will, like the nearly 2,500 dead in 1941, be just a faded memory that gets a cursory recognition on the scrolling headline underneath the latest Hollywood scandal playing out on your 24 hour news channel.
If so, we have learned nothing from Pearl Harbor and nothing from September 11th.
Never forget.
The above is from the blog, A Small Victory. I'm sure that Dec 7th means a lot of different things to different people. Many families were torn apart by the losses incurred this date and in the following years until Hitler and Japan were defeated. In the years that followed, the world has grown a lot and for the most part we have learned to live together peacefully, but there will always be threats to peace by tyrants like Hitler and Tojo.
The Soviet Union has been won over eliminating the threat of nuclear disaster - something we can all be happy about. Now we set our sights on harmonizing with North Korea and the terrorism that exists world-wide because of a group of fanatics in The Middle East.
On this the anniversary of Dec 7th Americans should forget their political partisanship and strive towards the end of terrorism.
On Dec. 7, 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers positioned 200 miles north of Oahu launched 181 attack planes toward the slowly waking port of Pearl Harbor and at U.S. military airfields elsewhere on the island. The two- stage attack killed 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians -- men, women and children.
Infamy, yes. Memory, perhaps not.
The anniversary of such an event should not pass unnoticed. I looked for stories today on the CNN and Fox websites. Nothing. I looked in Newsday, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Nothing.
Attacked - suddenly, no warning - by a nation we were not at war with. Sound familiar?
I would hate to think that 60 years from now the annivesary September 11, 2001 will be noted by nothing more than small paragraphs in small town newspapers.
It seems almost absurd that this day, this date of infamy, would see the front page of media websites and newspapers boast headlines about Paris Hilton and the Miss World contest with no mention at all of Pearl Harbor. I thought one of the things we - meaning all Americans - took from that terrible incident was this: Never Forget.
So have we forgotten? Will we eventually forget 9/11 as well? Perhaps many years from now the 3,000 dead will, like the nearly 2,500 dead in 1941, be just a faded memory that gets a cursory recognition on the scrolling headline underneath the latest Hollywood scandal playing out on your 24 hour news channel.
If so, we have learned nothing from Pearl Harbor and nothing from September 11th.
Never forget.
The above is from the blog, A Small Victory. I'm sure that Dec 7th means a lot of different things to different people. Many families were torn apart by the losses incurred this date and in the following years until Hitler and Japan were defeated. In the years that followed, the world has grown a lot and for the most part we have learned to live together peacefully, but there will always be threats to peace by tyrants like Hitler and Tojo.
The Soviet Union has been won over eliminating the threat of nuclear disaster - something we can all be happy about. Now we set our sights on harmonizing with North Korea and the terrorism that exists world-wide because of a group of fanatics in The Middle East.On this the anniversary of Dec 7th Americans should forget their political partisanship and strive towards the end of terrorism.