I looked at my watch around noon today… “Why is December 7th so familiar?”
I kept trying to figure it out… Then it hit me…
1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor. Speeches by Roosevelt and Churchill. Our Declaration of War.
Funny how it was okay to have a multi-front war then, based on an unprovoked attack by the Japanese, and declaring it against Germany, who really hadn’t done anything to us at that point.
How different is it, really, when they fly a couple of Jets into our buildings, unprovoked, and we declare war against both their nerve center and another genocidal maniac who was killing his people by the hundreds of thousands…?
Sixty-four years ago, today, President Roosevelt stood before Congress pleading for a Declaration of a State of War against Japan. The reason was simple: in a single day, December 7th, 1941, Japan had mobilized and attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Phillipines, Wake and Midway Islands, and, certainly not least, Pearl Harbor. Though we watched the Western Pacific with interest, it seemed improbable that anything should happen in Hawaii.
Thus was our entrance into World War II, on December 8th, 1941. On December 11th, 1941, War was declared against Germany and Italy after they had declared against us earlier in the day.
There aren’t many veterans left from that war, the youngest being eighty years old, but there are still a few you can find who are more than happy to share their stories. Those stories, in their words, certainly mean a lot more than the watered-down accounts in most history books.
