DECEMBER 7, 1941

 JAPANESE ATTACKED PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII, USA

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor External, Hawaii Territory, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The U.S.S. Arizona was completely destroyed and the U.S.S. Oklahoma capsized. A total of twelve ships sank or were beached in the attack and nine additional vessels were damaged. More than 160 aircraft were destroyed and more than 150 others damaged.

A hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.

The following day, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy.” Congress then declared War on Japan, abandoning the nation’s isolationism policy and ushering the United States into World War II. Within days, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States, and the country began a rapid transition to a wartime economy by building up armaments in support of military campaigns in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe.

Also on the day following Pearl Harbor, Alan Lomax, head of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song, sent a telegram to colleagues around the U.S. asking them to collect people’s immediate reactions to the bombing. Over the next few days prominent folklorists such as John Lomax, John Henry Faulk, Charles Todd, Robert Sonkin, and Lewis Jones responded by recording “man on the street” interviews in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They interviewed salesmen, electricians, janitors, oilmen, cabdrivers, housewives, students, soldiers, physicians, and others regarding the events of December 7. Among the interviewees was a California woman then visiting her family in Dallas, Texas.  SOURCE:  Library of Congress

* * * * * * * * * * 

I would think that the attack on Pearl Harbor should be remembered just as strongly as the September 11, 2001 attacks on US SOIL perpetrated by Islamic Extremists representing al Qaeda and orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, a native of Saudi Arabia.  BUT, in the truth of reality we see that after a few years...  all is forgotten...  all is forgiven...   and, life moves on...

It is also strange but absolutely true that each major conflict or incident, AMERICANS are never the same...  especially our veterans and their families even though the rest of us remember we do not have to carry the actual burden on our shoulders for the rest of our lives...

World War I

World War II

Korean War

Vietnam War

Wars in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan