A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Published Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. | By Donald R. McClarey

I guess for most Americans living today the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, seems like ancient history. It does not seem like that to me. As I was growing up in the Sixties I was surrounded by adults who recalled Pearl Harbor. My father, who was 8 years old at the time of the attack, remembered the long lines the next morning in our small town of men waiting outside of the recruiting offices of the Army and Navy to join up. He also conveyed to me the shock of a nation one moment at peace, and the next morning at war. Until September 11, 2001, I really didn’t fully comprehend what my father was talking about.

It is important to recall Pearl Harbor to remember that the safety and security we enjoy can be wrenched from us so easily if we are not vigilant, and also to recall the 2350 Americans who died that day. I have written about one of them here, Father Aloysius Schmitt, a Navy chaplain, who died on the USS Oklahoma saving other men. These men deserve to be remembered and to have prayers said for their souls and today I will do both, and I hope you will join me.

Update: 15 men were awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor that day, 10 of the recipients dying that day. One of the Medal of Honor winners, John Finn, is still alive recently turning 100. Go here to read about these very brave men.

6 Responses to A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Don the Kiwi says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 4:33pm

Visited the Pearl Harbour monument with Sandy when we had 5 enjoyable days on Oahu back in 2002. The Arizona memorial is almost spooky, and leaves one very emotional.
I was 4 months conceived in my mother’s womb when Pearl Harbour happened. I was about 18 months old when dad left for Egypt to Maardi Military camp outside Cairo, after which he took part in the Italian Campaign. I have these distant, infant memories of him leaving.
“Tora.Tora.Tora” was a great movie about Pearl Harbour – much better than the recent ‘love story’ one.
Donald R. McClarey says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 4:52pm

Tora Tora Tora was a magnificent and accurate film Don. The last scene in which Admiral Yamamoto, played by the actor Soh Yamamura, says “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” is truly remarkable. The words are probably apocryphal, although they accurately reflect Yamamoto’s view of the folly of Japan starting a war with the US. Yamamoto had studied in the US and he was well aware of the US industrial might, and thought that it was madness for Japan to attempt to beat the US. After the news of Pearl Harbor, while his officers were celebrating, Yamamoto was sunk in depression. He was a brilliant naval strategist who had the misfortune to implement an insane policy.
American Knight says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 8:45pm

Was it really necessary for the USA to war with Japan? It seems the intelligent leaders of the Japanese military did not want a fight with us. It also seems that our military and populace did not want a fight with Japan.

Clearly it was necessary for us to destroy Nazi Germany but how does it make sense that we were allies with Stalin and antagonizing the Japanese? After the war we basically handed China over to the Communists. So we ended up supporting Stalin and Mao while dropping nuclear bombs on the two Japanese cities with the largest Christian populations. Not to mention handing Poland and eastern Europe to the Communists. Hmm. . . Something stinks.

Sacrificing Christians and supporting Communists – that doesn’t seem very American, at least not a Christian (although Protestant) America – it certainly lines up with a Masonic America though. At least it gets you thinking.

May God have Mercy on us and may the dead of Pearl and WWII requiescant in pace.
Donald R. McClarey says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 9:08pm

“Was it really necessary for the USA to war with Japan?”

After Pearl Harbor most certainly. We “antagonized” the Japanese by refusing to sell them the raw material they needed to conquer China, a war they started in 1937. The Japanese slaughtered 20,000,000 civilians in their attempt to conquer East Asia. I am quite glad we stopped them.

As to Mao, we never supported him, and our support for Stalin was a wartime alliance of convenience that ended with the war.
American Knight says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 9:24pm

Donald,

I am not saying we should have supported the Japanese either. Support is sometimes given simply by looking the other way.

History is not as simple as we are lead to beleive and their was a Communist conspiracy in play before Marx even wrote the manifesto. It did not end with Gorbachev, it simply came to be known by another name: neo-progressivism (containing Critical Theory, environmentalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Catholicism, anti-human, nihilism), or, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis of Evil.
David Gillaspie says:

Monday, December 7, 2009 A.D. at 10:55pm

The lessons of Pearl Harbor are as valuable today as they were the day after the attack. The context of that day with the end of War in the Pacific is grizzly.

Thanks for a heartfelt reminder,

David Gillaspie
http://deegeesbb.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/pearl-harbor-care-lessons/