The sky ruptured, unleashing hell on thousands below.
It looked like a natural catastrophe, but this was a man-made disaster, a fury manufactured by an enemy that wedded hatred with technology.
Sailing across the sky after dawn, hundreds of Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor that morning, killing more than 2,400 Americans at the U.S. naval base in Hawaii.
Dec. 7, 1941 — the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy.” One of the darkest moments in our history, it would change the country and the world.
The U.S. would declare war on Japan one day later, and Germany would declare war on the U.S. three days after that: the war that America, gripped by isolationism following World War I, had resisted for so long came to our shore.
There are few survivors left from that horrible day, about 12, according to most. Which makes it all the more important for current and future generations to speak on their behalf, to remember their bravery and honor their memory.
Eighty-four years. It has been so long that we forget the danger to the naval base did not end with the attack. The work of repairing the damage to the base was long and dangerous.
One day, an unexploded bomb was discovered in the shell of a ship sunk long before. It weighed 1,750-pounds — a horror that would amplify the terror the base experienced on Dec. 7. “When would this end?” officers might well have asked.
If so, there was at least one officer who asked himself a different question, according to the New York Times. How to prevent another tragedy? He knew the answer; he risked his life to unscrew the live fuses that would have piled death upon death.
Yet what made Pearl Harbor so significant, both historically and in the moment, was that its impact rippled beyond the naval base. It ushered us into a war that most Americans, both civilians and politicians, never wanted. And, in doing so, it saved the world from the evils of Nazi Germany — a regime so vile that, all these years later, it is almost impossible to fathom.
“I heard cries, whispered prayers of fear, and cursing in anger,” Vaughn Hamberlin, a Pearl Harbor survivor who died in 1994, told his son years later. “But, through it all, I saw no panic. I had tasted the bitters of Hell, but I did not weep.”
With the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, a different world order arose. Europe was broken, devastated by the wreckage of war, and America and Russia emerged as superpowers. The U.S. took on, through the Marshall Plan, the monumental task of rebuilding Europe.
As the years passed, the anger sparked by Pearl Harbor morphed into healing. We remembered Pearl Harbor, but more than the catastrophe, we remembered the bravery in the face of the catastrophe. It was an extraordinary sign — the sign of a strong nation intent more on forging a bright future than focusing on a dark past.
Abandoning the isolationism of the pre-Pearl Harbor years, the country recognized the importance of global unity. The U.S. spearheaded efforts to strengthen ties with other countries, leading to organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the military alliance, NATO. It was not a perfect system — democracy tends to be slow and messy — but it fostered free trade, economic development and global security.
Today, 84 years later, the isolationism of the pre-World War II years has returned. President Donald Trump, almost a year into his second term, has resumed the “America First” theme that energized broad sections of the country 10 years ago. He has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, UNESCO and the U.N. Human Rights Council, as well as cutting funds to global food programs.
“Destroying multilateralism does not make the United States stronger or give it a freer hand internationally; it makes us weaker,” Ryan Mulholland, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said.
