Friday, December 07, 2007
INFAMOUS
Today is Pearl Harbor Day.
You didn't remember?
Not many people do unless they are old enough to have been listening to the radio that day.
I was and I was only 4 years old.
I do remember it. The day.
My mother fainted as my father was glued to the radio. Relatives came over and it was hashed and rehashed.
The Second World War changed my life considerably but that is only clear in retrospect.
And, to that extent, it is just another strong influence. Had we not had that one there would have been another.
It was a long war but not as long as the one we are in now.
My Dad never really got over it. He was on a Destroyer Escort plowing the North Atlantic over and over as they took transport ships across and back.
Then he went to the Pacific where a kamikaze plane hit his ship right before the end of the war there.
I think it is the effect on my father that changed things more than anything else.
The nightmares. The inability to forget the event.
It was the best and worst time of his life.
And therefore, to some extent, his family's.
That is a pretty microscopic look at the situation.
They say that the Big Two was the last 'good war'.
Well, OK.
I suppose to the extent that no one doubts our motive in participating, that is true.
There has been doubt about every war since.
It is hard to remember today that, in the beginning, there were many citizens who did not want the War or America's entry into it.
But, they were a fractious lot with a great many differing reasons.
FDR had the power to go with it and he did.
Veterans worry that no one will remember this day.
That is probably true.
In the final scheme of things it is only a day.
And now we have what we believe to be more pressing concerns; greater calamities.
Global warming. A third world war. That kind of niggling shit.
Those are my thoughts.
I can't make as big a deal out of it as I did before and I can't dismiss it either.
