A column about history, culture, policy, and things in between.
Literally translated from the language of the ancient Hawaiians these two beautiful words mean "water of pearl", and it is what those ocean-faring people called Pearl Harbor. On Thursday of this week we look back sixty-five years to the day that the Empire of Japan, led into conquest by its Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, attacked the United States Navy at Pearl Harbor.
I can remember my father, by all accounts an educated and articulate man, reflecting back on the event decades later, and trying to put into words his reaction to the attack. His inability to adequately do so told me more than any words could have. He would ultimately serve as a lieutenant in the Navy that was attacked that day.
There were 3,581 American casualties, with hundreds of planes and ships lost. It could have been worse, as the entire cadre of US aircraft carriers, which might have been at idle anchorage, were all out on training missions, thus avoiding certain destruction and the death of their enormous crews. The most devestating loss was the USS Arizona, whose memorial stands today as one of the most simplistic and beautiful war memorials in the world.
Although this date marked the United States' entry into World War Two, the war had already been raging for nearly two and a half years. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Greece had already fallen to the German Blitzkrieg, and on that December morning, Hitler's hitherto invincible legions were at the gates of Moscow. Protected by her Channel, the RAF, and the invincible spirit of her Prime Minister Winston Churchill, only England had stood alone against the Nazi Fuhrer.
It is difficult today for us to imagine a world in which the US was not even involved, much less a superpower. Everything changed with Pearl, however. The United States entered the war with both feet; vowing an objective of total victory, the only satisfactory measure of which would be the unconditional surrender of her foes. It was America's time, and she would wage war on two global fronts, on a scale never seen before or since. In a little more than three years we would travel from a place of isolationism and total defeat, to victory and world prominence.
For the Allies the war in the Pacific began as it had in Europe, with a series of unmitigated defeats. After knocking out our Pacific fleet at Pearl, the Japanese would invade and conquer the Philippines, Manchuria, Malaysia, and Singapore; the stain of her conquest spreading like ink over the map of the Pacific, and lapping at the shores of Australia. Their occupation of those countries and treatment of their POW's would demonstrate a level of barbarism and savagery that was every bit the equal of the Nazis. America was blessed to have Douglas MacArthur, the greatest military genius and field commander in our nation's history. His towering genius and intrepid leadership rewrote the strategies of warfare, and would win victories that bedazzled and confounded his Japanese opponents. In the spring of 1945, he would accept the surrender of Japan aboard another battleship named for a State; the USS Missouri, home of the virtually unknown new President Harry S. Truman.
The tide would not turn towards towards victory, however, until the battle of Midway. There the courageous pilots of the US Dauntless dive-bombers located the decoyed Japanese carriers, and flying straight into certain death, attacked. Most would die, but not before destroying the heart of the Japanese fleet. Thinking back to Pearl Harbor as he watched the Japanese carrier Akagi burn and sink, US Airman Wilmer Gallaher exulted into his radio, "Arizona - I remember you".
