Applying lessons of World War II to today, on anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack
Wednesday is the 81st anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor in whose aftermath the United States redefined itself as a nation and within the world of nations until the attacks of 9/11, to which the former is invariably compared.
The United States of 1941, and the world for that matter, was very different from our world today and with that span of time, I suspect, comes both temporal and philosophic detachment when looking at events eight decades ago and half a world away for those on the Eastern Seaboard.
I learned something about Pearl Harbor as a child in American History classes, then later at college through my classes and studies, and still later when I encountered men (and women) who had served in World War II (and not always on the victorious side).
The more I learned, the less I knew, which is one of the positive effects of education: because it's when you don't know what you don't know, that you're at your most dangerous both to yourself and to others. That's especially true in international relations in times of crisis. When the last resort, armed force, becomes the first recourse, we all lose.
I've never had the opportunity, yet, to visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (the Arizona wasn't the only ship that sank, and her sailors weren't the only ones who died in the attack of Dec. 7, 1941, that President Franklin Roosevelt called "a day that will live in infamy"), but I hope to.
I wandered across the battlefields of World War II while living in Europe from Normandy, France (where every single bar is called June 6, or at least seems to be), through the ruins of the Alte Oper in downtown Frankfurt am Main, (West) Germany, as modern a city as you could ever imagine.
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I visited Dachau, outside of Munich, walking through the remains and reminders of the prisoner barracks trying to grasp how people had lived (and died) there. I never got used to the fact that no birds are ever heard at Bergen-Belsen in the Luneburg Heide, one of the Nazi interim equations as they perfected their Final Solution. It was as if God, Himself, had turned His face from us, ashamed of those who insist and persist in our belief that we are created in His likeness.
All of those spaces and places are connected in a nearly straight line to Pearl Harbor, Bataan, the Rape of Nanking, and a thousand other geographic locales (more than 20 million men (and women) fought in World War II and the death toll of those who were non-combatants may be higher than that number) as some sort of a perverse demonstration that as noble as we can be and claim to be, the depths of our depravity and indifference towards one another may not yet be fully plumbed.
There has been so much darkness and blood and tears since the Cautionary Tale we think of as World War II. The rush of all the ensuing years may have served to make us numb to the approaching calamity of what will undoubtedly be the Last World War. We won't have to worry about what lessons we learned, or didn't, as there will be no one left to read anything.
Bill Kenny, of Norwich, writes a weekly column about Norwich issues. His blog, Tilting at Windmills, can be accessed at https://tiltingatwindmills-dweeb.blogspot.com/.
This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: Lessons from Pearl Harbor, World War II
