Morning Thoughts: December 7, 2017

Do we, as Americans, learn, or only remember? The last man I knew who was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 died this year. His name was Kay Matthews and he wouldn’t talk about it. No wonder, it turned out to be a day of tragedy and horror, in epic proportions. In total, 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded the day Japan attached our country.

Like most all veterans, Kay came home from the war and led a successful and productive life, his as an attorney and later a judge. He was still practicing law until a little over a year ago. His was a great generation in many ways, I’ll be the first to admit.

I wonder how it must have felt to a generation that was just emerging from the horrors of the Great Depression to have awakened almost three weeks from Christmas, 76 years ago, to hear the news that the Empire of Japan had just carried out a surprise attack on American military bases in Hawaii. I still know people who were young then and can recall what they were doing at the moment they heard the news. Their stories range from the numbness of shock to total surprise.

My generation has similar stories to tell about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Later generations can empathize from their witnessing of the attacks on the Twin Towers. There are things we will always remember, but will we learn from them?

While still numb from the news of Pearl Harbor, Americans learned the next day that Germany had declared war on our country in an act of solidarity with Japan. World War Two had entered what would eventually come to be its final phase. The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives. Other countries counted their losses in the millions, with most of their cities devastated.

National resolve, uncommon effort, and the leadership of people like Franklin Roosevelt brought our country out of the war as a world leader.

The end of the Great Depression and World War Two sometimes seemed comforting to me. It said that America can prevail. What seemed to be the beginning of the end to the ravages of unbridled racial prejudice in the country was uplifting as well—that is until the country elected a mixed-race president. Like a 1950s science fiction monster awakened by nuclear gamboling, the horror of racism ravishes us anew while gaining strength from the tacit approval of the powers ruling our country.

I’m afraid, and this my opinion only, that we are now seeing planned and powerful attacks upon the very values and institutions that provided the strength for America to achieve the moments of greatness that it has in the past.

I hope not. Any thinking American must hope not. The signs, though, aren’t encouraging. As recently as yesterday, our current president announced plans that could result in the complete destabilization of a fractious part of the world, one that Americans fought and died for in World War Two. That destabilization could very well mean the end of the planet as it currently exists. This end, unfortunately is supported by a fanatical religious sect within our own country that sees a worldwide conflagration as an integral element of their religious fulfillment. This conflagration would usher in, according their beliefs, the beginning of what they imagine as a glorious eternity.

A rock-solid belief in a heavenly and blissful afterlife—for the chosen—seems to be a common doctrinal cornerstone for religious sects bent on the annihilation of worldwide harmony and peace.

The Galilean must be weeping.

The sect represents a small, but united and politically powerful, segment of our society. Its members contribute little to the well-being of our country, but command an inordinate proportion of attention and media coverage. Those who resist them are being systemically reduced in strength, even including the right to vote or have their children educated. Many Arkansans pay no attention at all. They are more concerned with the hiring of a new football coach.

I find my optimism being eaten away like the foundations of a lighthouse located on a wild and uncompromising sea.

Lewis Thomas, in his classic Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony warned that during the second movement of that work, he could hear the bomb bay doors opening to initiate the end of the world. Anymore, I’m afraid to listen. I’m afraid that I, personally, might hear “the eternal footman snicker.”

Morning Thoughts: War

My thoughts this morning begin with Pearl Harbor and shift to the Battle of the Bulge, particularly to a sad unit from Camp Robinson, AR, near where I live. Two memories stand out. The first is from a stranger whose statement appears in “The American Experience”:

“Our Infantry training regiment at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, was about halfway through its 17-week training cycle in late December, 1944, when we fell out for roll call one morning and half the men weren't there. We found out later that members of Companies A and B had been shipped to what became known as the Battle of the Bulge (presumably during the night). I was in D Company and we and C Company remained. We finished training and, because the European war was winding down by then, we all were sent to the Pacific theater, where I stayed for another 18 months, but fortunately missed combat.”

M.H.

Highland Park, IL

The second I heard many times from my father-in-law, the Late Robert Julius Cole, a rifleman in the 313^th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division. He told how his unit was pulled from the front lines a short time before the Germans launched their attack on December 16, 1944 during one of the coldest winters ever recorded in eastern France. His unit was replaced, he said, by “some boys from Camp Robinson,” who were ill-trained and had never seen battle. The unit was virtually destroyed on the first day of the offensive. “They never knew what hit them and what was left of the unit was sent back home.” He always maintained that the Germans knew, somehow, that a green unit had replaced a seasoned one at that precise spot.

This was a little over four years from the day Pearl Harbor suffered the surprise attack. Who knew on December 7, 1941 how many young men would be thrown into the meat grinder of war before it all ended?

"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve," – is a line by the character playing Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto in the American film Tora! Tora! Tora!, based on the Pearl Harbor attack. There is no evidence that the admiral ever said it, but it was a great bit of screenplay. What Yamamoto did write, however, was, "This war will give us much trouble in the future. The fact that we have had a small success at Pearl Harbor is nothing. The fact that we have succeeded so easily has pleased people. I do not think it is a good thing to whip up propaganda to encourage the nation. People should think things over and realize how serious the situation is."

We should all, perhaps, memorize that line.

Awakening a giant?