12.07.12
Pearl Harbor Day
What’s worth remembering goes a little deeper than what Americans are comfortable with.
It put the country into a war with the Axis Powers, Japan and Germany (and Il Duce’s Italy), the first two countries possessing militaries that could smash American forces.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the most powerful naval force in the world on December 7th. And it would remain a dangerous and formidable foe for years.
Even after Midway, the Japanese fleet still had nasty surprises in store for American fighting men. In August of 1942, a Japanese heavy cruiser force utterly destroyed a US cruiser force off Guadalcanal in the Battle of Savo Island. It was the worst surface action group defeat this country has ever suffered.
The Japanese Navy fought at night, had deadly destroyer-launched torpedo tactics, and at Savo achieved complete tactical surprise.
James Hornfischer’s Neptune’s Inferno chronicles that battle and many others off Guadalcanal and in the Solomon’s at a time during the war when US fighting men often went into action out gunned, frequently with the expectation that they would die at the hands of the Japanese.
Today, all that’s lost in the memorial of December 7. To Americans it’s a day when the Japanese sneak attacked the US Navy, achieving a victory that’s flamingly chronicled in old movies.
And then we joined the war, kicked their asses and dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yaaaay!
It’s transformed into another ritual reference with virtually no meaning, particularly when contrasted with the country’s current relationship with its military.
The US military is the most powerful in world history and it never goes into action expecting to lose. And in the last twelve years it has never faced a capable opponent. Not even close.
It exists, and does its thing, whatever the current political leadership asks. This has no linkage relationship with what the US, and everyone, had to do in WWII in cooperating to destroy the Axis powers and preserve freedom in the west. Anyone who believes differently is a fool and insulting to history.
What a waste, what a tragedy.