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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

A date which will live in infamy...

Today December 7 2011 is the seventieth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. As the event that brought the United States into World War II it is certainly one of the most pivotal events in world history. No American who lived through that day will ever forget it. For them it was an event so cataclysmic that it became one of those “where were you when…” events. It was one of those events so momentous that everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news; like later generations with the assassination of JFK or the events of 911. Several generations have passed since that day in 1941. Many young Americans have forgotten; if they ever knew, what happened that day. Yet there is still an understanding of how important the event was to the American Psyche. Americans have always been better mythmakers than Canadians. I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion. They have always been good at taking events; crystallizing the spirit or essence of the event and preserving that. Americans still “get” Pearl Harbor Canadians don’t. I was there last month; in Honolulu and there was no way I would visit Oahu without visiting Pearl Harbor. You will never get the historian out of me. You can never understand Pearl Harbor without understanding what was happening in America and the rest of the world in December of 1941. Like most world events war was at the heart of it. The world had emerged from the First World War, bloodied, exhausted, sick (Spanish influenza) and broke. The victorious Allies (including the Americans) had inflicted a punishing peace treaty on Germany and were forcing her to pay back vast sums of money spent by the Allies on the war. Germany had been forced to surrender by mass starvation and had no money to pay reparations. The whole world descended into the great depression. All nations began to look inward. They were poor and starving and had no time to think of their neighbors in Europe and no money to do anything about their plight even if they did care. America especially retreated into “Isolationism” it was felt that America had been sucked into the First War by her European Allies the French and the English and that the war had been a waste of American lives and money. American politicians began to run on platforms of “No Foreign Wars”. While the economy was going south in America the Germans were starting to rebuild. Hitler rose to power and the world looked aside at his eccentricities because he was rebuilding the economy. When he began saber rattling the European democracies made deals backed up by vague threats that they were ill equipped to support. Had Hitler existed in a vacuum America might never have joined the war. But Hitler had made a pact with Japan and Japan had plans of its’ own in the Pacific that made conflict virtually inevitable. America remained neutral while Germany overran Poland and Belgium, Holland and France and bombed the great cities of Britain into rubble. The American President FDR knew that he should do something but he did not have the people of America behind him. He was a great friend of Winston Churchill (who was himself half American) and gave as much aid in money and materiel as he dared. In the Pacific the Japanese invaded Manchuria and were threatening the holdings of the European powers then at war with her German ally. The two great Pacific powers (the U.S. and Japan) were on a collision course. Japan had few natural resources and the Americans had gotten fed up the Japanese aggression and cut of exports to Japan. The Japanese formed plans to seize the resources that they needed. In secret they formed a plan to strike the Americans hard and fast. Admiral Yamamoto the great mastermind of the Japanese war effort had spent time in the U.S. he knew the awesome power of the industries there. He told the high command he could promise only six months of victory against the Americans. What the Japanese wanted on December 7th was to catch the American aircraft carriers in harbor. They knew the surface ships were there but they wanted the carriers. While the attack was a huge humiliation and blow to American prestige it was a limited victory for the Japanese. They did not get the carriers and they did not damage the naval facilities and fuel storage on Oahu. The Americans lost four battleships (three of which they salvaged and refloated). Six months later at the battle of Midway the Americans caught Admiral Nagumo’s flotilla and sank four of the carriers that were at Pearl Harbor. True to Yamamoto’s word he gave them six months of victory. Today when you go to Pearl Harbor it is still bristling with naval might. The museum dedicated to the battle overlooks Battleship Row where those four ships were sunk. You watch a very moving video put together by the U.S. Park Service then board a launch to visit the site of the USS Arizona. She is the only Battleship left at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Aboard her are eleven hundred of her crew; they died that fateful day and sleep in her belly. When you look down from the memorial you can see the rusted hull beneath the waves. Oil still bubble’s up out of her seventy years later like the blood of the great lady. Do you remember the old joke about the plane crashing on the border and where do you bury the survivors? Well if you were a survivor of the Arizona you might have a choice to make. For if you are a survivor who was aboard her on Dec. 7 1941 you can opt to be cremated and have your ashes interred with your shipmates in her hull. If you served on her before Pearl Harbor the Park Service will scatter your ashes over the site. This day December 7 2011 they will inter the ashes of three survivors with their old comrades. This is a solemn place; a place of remembrance and reflection; of loss and of forgiveness. For out of the ashes of the Second World War came a different plan. Not to punish our enemies like the Treaty of Versailles did in 1919; but instead the Marshall plan where the Allies (largely the U.S.) helped pick her former enemies up and gave them back their dignity and helped them build two world class economies out of the dust and death of war. These men who are today being reunited with their comrades are heroes too, for not only the dead are heroes. The fact that I observed Japanese tourists on the memorial says to me that they didn’t die in vain. May they all rest in peace.