Wars and Rumors of War

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Al Quaida's attack on two symbols of American wealth and power: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. There were observances and remembrances all over America.

Let them be the last such observances.

In three months, we will have the seventieth anniversary of Japan's attack on America at Pearl Harbor. I remember that day quite clearly.

Unlike September 11, December 7th was not remembered with a one-month remembrance, a six-month remembrance, annual remembrances and a tenth anniversary remembrance. We were too busy on the home front collecting scrap paper, tin cans, scrap metal, growing food in victory gardens, converting from peacetime to wartime production, freeing resources for the troops in the field by rationing most products, and putting everyone's shoulder to the wheel.

In the six months after Pearl Harbor, Colonel Doolittle led a B-25 raid on Tokyo, our aircraft carriers fought Japanese carriers to a standstill in the Coral Sea, and our carrier task forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers near Midway, halting the Japanese advance. Before the first anniversary, we built a major army air corps base in New Guinea, started ferrying supplies to China over the hump of the Himalayas and the Burma Road and our submarines took the war to the very gates of the Japanese home islands.

In the meantime our scientists and engineers developed nuclear weapons and a way to deliver them.


Three years and eight months after Pearl Harbor, Japan surrendered at a ceremony on the decks of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Three months earlier, we had accepted the German surrender in Europe.

By that time, the only celebrations we wanted to observe were V-E Day (victory in Europe) and V-J Day (victory in Japan).

No wonder I don't remember national remembrances of December 7th. A lot of other things were going on.

In 1947 the Truman Doctrine established a policy of supporting "free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Later that year we created the Marshall Plan to speed European recovery. In 1948, we responded to a Soviet blockade of Berlin by the Berlin Airlift. In June of 1950, North Korean troops attacked South Korea across the 38th parallel, and we came to their aid. Later that year, the Chinese People's Republic entered the war.

By the tenth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we had just recently defeated the Chinese at the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge. No anniversary observance that year, either.

We never pretended that Japan attacked the United States because they hated our freedoms. We understood that The United States stood in the way of Japan's imperial ambitions. That's why they attacked.