Pearl Harbor
“…what’s past is prologue…”– William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, Act 2, Scene I
Seventy-three years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a Joint Session of Congress. What follows is an excerpt of that address…
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked, by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace… Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”
–President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Address to Joint Session of Congress, 8 December 1941
In the course of history there are occurrences which, despite the seemingly isolated context of their respective contemporary settings, nevertheless have ramifications which last for decades. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was just such an occurrence. It set into motion a chain of events that united the American people to support a war effort like no other- before or since, introduced nuclear warfare, led to the ultimate destruction of totalitarianism in both Europe and the Pacific, ushered in a decades-long Cold War, and established the United States as a world superpower, just to name a few.
Sadly, however, the passage of time has eroded and faded into oblivion the central lesson of Pearl Harbor- that isolationism and living in denial of a real world can leave a nation and a people open to attack, and ultimately result in profound and lasting changes to their way of life- think September 11th, 2001, whose own central lesson has begun to fade, especially with the young people who have now grown to the age of electoral suffrage.
We did not seek war with Japan (nor Germany, nor Italy), nor did we seek war with radical Islam. Yet both were thrust upon us, in one form or another, because of our naiveté and because we fell into a false sense of isolation, one that insidiously told us “those problems are over there- we need to stay out”- a recipe for ultimate disaster and vastly increased carnage.
There are those who insist, to this day, that both of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and on 9/11 might well have been avoided if we had done a better job of appeasing those who were bent on our ultimate destruction. There are also those who attempt to play a moral equivalency card- one that expresses the egregious lie that the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were somehow justified from the perspective of those who perpetrated these acts. Such folly may sell in the cloistered world of academia and theological seminary, and may even persuade young and impressionable minds of their supposed enlightenment, to the point of advocacy and active protest. Yet, in the real world- the world where we unfortunately find ourselves living- putting into place national policy which espouses this fantasy can, and only will, lead to our own demise, and quite possibly, our own destruction.
It would be nice if, in the words of Rodney King, we could “all just get along”. Go try that one on a radical jihadist and see how long your head remains attached to your torso, if you are a man, and how long your virtue remains intact if you are a woman. Like the Japanese who beheaded our prisoners of war, and made wholesale rape a policy of occupation in China, Radical Islam, in the form of ISIS, is employing the very same stratagem.
Just as the Japanese “suddenly and deliberately” launched a pre-meditated attack on the United States in 1941, radical Islam “suddenly and deliberately” launched an attack on the United States sixty years later. Americans were united in their resolve to annihilate the Japanese Empire, as a result, and did so. It’s too bad that we lack such resolve, as a nation today, to destroy the evil that is radical Islam. Without such resolve, we will most certainly NOT “gain the inevitable victory, so help us God” and it is we the people who ultimately, ignobly, and finally, bear the responsibility of our own demise.
-Drew Nickell, 8 December 2014
© 2014, by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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