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A day that should live in infamy
Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And while the haunting words of President Roosevelt - promising that the day “shall live in infamy” - still reverberate through American schools, the truth is that the magnificent power of time - healer of all wounds - seems to have rendered observances of the awful attack rather muted in a modern context.
Relations with the Japanese and Germans have been fully mended over the past half-century, and the numbers of the Greatest Generation are dwindling with every day. But it is important that we remember the sheer horror of this moment time, and take even just a moment every year to be thankful for the successful emerge from the last war that truly commanded the involvement of the entire world.
It is ironic that two of the defining moments of World War II sit nearly a perfect half-year apart on the calendar - the June recognition of D-Day and the December recognition of Pearl Harbor. But if we are no longer a society interested in observing the crucial battles and awful casualties that raged on during every day of the calendar year, it doesn’t seem like all that great a toll to at least pause for a moment of thankful reflection as the early days of June and December pass.
After all, we manage to do it every July, and that was a war from which we have no survivors left to thank today.
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