Our View: Remember Pearl Harbor

12:18 AM, Dec. 7, 2013  |  Comments
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Remember Pearl Harbor

It was a slogan - more a battle cry - and the title of a song that reminded the nation why they banded together to fight on foreign soil and to sacrifice on the home front.

It reminded Americans, in the words of the song, of "the thing that happened on Hawaii's shore."

For decades after World War II, they remembered Pearl Harbor as though it had been a recent event.

So should we, on this Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, which memorializes the loss of 2,500 American lives and the event that spurred the United States' entry into the war.

Just before 8 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941, the sky above Honolulu filled with hundreds of Japanese fighter planes during a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

At 8:10 a.m., a bomb pierced the deck of the U.S.S. Arizona, setting off an explosion in the forward ammunition magazine. More than 1,000 sailors were trapped in the sinking battleship.

The barrage of bombs and bullets lasted only about two hours, but at the end of it, 18 U.S. ships and 300 planes were destroyed or badly damaged, along with the docks and airfield.

"We will always remember how they died for liberty ?"

The nation was galvanized by that event.

Calling it "the date which will live in infamy," President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the following day asked Congress to declare war on Japan. It did, with only one dissenting vote.

Thus began the struggle that would not end until 1945.

The entire nation held its resolve as it remembered Pearl Harbor, "as we go to meet the foe ?"

There are precious few left today who can give a first-hand account of the events of that day, as the ranks of that generation become ever thinner.

But we should always remember and honor those who died there and those who answered the call to duty, whether on the battlefront or the homefront.

And like 9/11, Pearl Harbor should serve as a reminder to be always vigilant, even on American soil.

Our citizens were reminded regularly over the four brutal years of the war to "Remember Pearl Harbor, as we march to victory."

They did.

And 72 years later, we're still free.

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