A Pearl in the rough

A Pearl in the rough

Posted on December 7th, 2008 by Andrew Turner

So it’s December 7th and the day is just about to come to a close.

With nary a mention of Pearl Harbor in public media, at least, through a day’s worth of checking into CNN and flipping around the radio.

Usually, there’s some mention — it may get one on the 11:00 news tonight. I’ll find out in a few minutes. It may have received some mention this morning, but I didn’t watch the news this morning. I didn’t look at the paper. I’ll admit I didn’t go out of my way to find it.

I didn’t really have to; though I’m far from having lived through it, the mention of December 7th automatically brings to my inner ear Roosevelt’s “a date which will live in infamy”, and some tangible imagining of the ripples of the fear and anger that gripped Americans on that day.

What happened?

Was it outdone by September 11th?

Though it may seem as though the attack on the Towers spun off some type of sorta-world-war-ish effort, at least, a worldwide attack on a generally nebulous ideology, I wouldn’t say it drew us into an ongoing great war of any type.

Was what happened on another Sunday so long ago simply too long ago to remain relevant? Is the idea of an enemy crashing planes into us not worthy of some sort of… something more?

I’m not a flag-waving super-patriot, and I don’t expect to see Pearl Harbor Day memorialized through Sunday sale circulars, but I do find all the… nothing… odd.

Roosevelt said in his speech:

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”

Odd in a different way, one that we might say has been echoed a bit more recently, though our modern version rings hollow and distant, and weak, and diminishing.

World War II lasted six years, and I don’t know if that absolute victory was won; certainly, the idea that “this form of treachery shall never again endanger us” seems to have fallen by the wayside somewhere along the line, through forgetfulness, denial, or the change of generations, or maybe just lost in the same fading echoes.