I was moved by the appearance of a very short article in this morning’s Washington Post, “Pearl Harbor Remembered.” I suppose that school children are still taught that December 7 is the date on which Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, causing huge loss of life and crippling the American Pacific fleet. The commemorative ceremonies today in Honolulu will feature a pilot who bombed Tokyo as part of the Doolittle raid — a rather bellicose response, since it reminds Americans of the enormous death and destruction our bombing subsequently caused in Japan. But of course the usual moral extracted from the Pearl Harbor story is the need for better intelligence to prevent surprise attacks. There was even greater criticism of U.S. intelligence failure in 1941 than there was in 2001, but I suppose the real lesson is that no country can ever certainly prevent such tragedies.
I was 7 years old on Sunday, December 7, 1941. My family lived in Chicago, and on that day my father took me to see my first professional football game. We were North Siders, and so were Bears fans, but this game was on the South Side, at the Cardinals’ home field, Comiskey Park. My Dad drove me down in his shiny new Cadillac on a sparkling, sunny, quite cold day. I remember the day vividly, but I have had to go to Wikipedia to be reminded that the Bears beat the Cards that day, 34-24. The Bears went 10-1 that year, and won the league championship for the fifth time.
In retrospect it was a quite creepy experience, since during the game there was no announcement of the Japanese attack over the public address system — and of course there were no wireless radios. We did not get the news until we left the stadium after the game, and encountered newsboys displaying large headlines about Pearl Harbor. We turned on the radio news when we got to the car (but not until we started the car to get some heat, since it was cold!), and heard the famous Ben Grauer news report on our way back to our apartment. The memories of that day are my first of an historical event, though I suspect I would have remembered going to my first football game in any case.
But how long ago it seems, and what a different sort of experience it was! I grew up during World War II, which in retrospect seems the last war fully supported by the American public. We had a common understanding then of who the enemy was and what we were fighting for, and the two Victory Days commanded universal respect and joy. Since then I have lived through Korea, Vietnam, two Gulf Wars and what seem like innumerable smaller wars, none fully successful or satisfying for Americans, and all quite painful for many thousands of us — and our “enemies.”
Pearl Harbor was an appalling tragedy. But in the end both countries committed terrible acts in the name of national defense. Today I salute the dead on both sides.
