I know enough to know that it was on a Sunday because my dad had told me they interrupted the Bears game on radio to make the announcement in Chicago. That was 72 years ago. Today.
Today, December 7th, 1941. It was a day that would live in infamy. It was a day that shook this country and finally made it wake up to all the terror and all the danger all around.
Sometimes I think I can imagine and almost feel what it was like to be alive in that time. Alive here at home; alive and in an American uniform overseas; alive and a pilot in the RAF; or maybe in a tank in the north African deserts; alive and landing on a beach on a lonely atoll in the Pacific; alive and just a regular citizen in Nanking, or Manilla, or Stanlingrad, or Naples, or Paris, or Warsaw, or, yes, even in Berlin.
This brings on so many feelings- pride, fear, hopelessness, destitution, anger, frustration, hopefulness, terror, dejection, and, as time would have rolled on a growing feeling that it might soon end and some sort of normalcy return to the world. To my own little world.
I can imagine a father who has lost contact with his family having no knowledge of whether or not they were still even alive; or of a mother arriving at a concentration camp and having her children pulled from her embrace; or a boy who sees his parents killed by the Nazis or the Fascists or the Japanese; or a young soldier terrified in his first battle; or a grandmother wondering about the four grandsons who are off to a foreign war; or an officer who has to make split decisions on a hot battlefield; or a young girl so fearful of what the enemy soldiers might do to her; or of a father, not so unlike me perhaps, who struggles to the end to protect what remains of his family in the burned out basement of a bombed building in the middle of December in Stalingrad; giving up any of his own food so that he does not have to watch another of his children starve finally to death.
I can sometimes feel these and more and then I look around and realize how very good I have it now and, in comparison, how good I have had it throughout my life. My struggles pale in comparison- so do so many who claim to have suffered more than they really have if they were to compare it to the world of long ago. To other times, other places, other people.
I realize and then I further realize how easily and swiftly it might one day change. I will not force our existence to compare to that of those who truly suffered, to those who paid a much higher price or made a much greater sacrifice (some willingly but many more not so)- that would be absurd. But I will continue to read and remember, to feel and empathize, to realize how very nearby it all might be, and, most importantly, to make sure that my children are aware of these and other truths.
It is only with our children that we can likely now alter all that exists as threats to us all- whether we see any of it coming or not.
They say FDR saw it coming, KNEW it was coming but I really do not know.
I do know that many men who now rest under water at a place called Pearl Harbor probably never saw it coming but come it did. And the price they paid can never be repaid unless we honor their memory and work to preserve a country and life that they felt worthy and ready to defend.
I will not turn my eyes away and I will teach my children to be ever-vigilant and armed with the knowledge and the courage to question and stand up for their beliefs of all that should be. I will teach them to always honor the brave who have done so, in likely more drastic ways, in the past. On this day and all others.
Now, as I was reminded by my son, it is time to go and place the flag outdoors for others to see. And perhaps they, too, might remember with honor and a commitment to stand ever-strong against the tyranny and evil still too readily available in this world we live in.
God bless all of you who fought and even died on our behalf and in our defense. It is something that cannot be easily repaid and should never be forgotten. May you always rest in peace.
And may God bless America, this day and all days.