The Japanese bombarded the Pearl Harbor Naval Base on Oahu, Hawaii sixty five years ago today. To the Americans of that era, it was both a blow to our national honor and a wake-up call to the folly of isolationism. We fought the Japanese mercilessly until two nuclear bombings of the Japanese homeland convinced them that the war was lost.
My Pearl Harbor post from last year featured actual radio broadcasts from Dec. 7, 1941. Here they are again:
2:28 PM (EST) First news bulletin broadcast over NBC Red network (0:31):
Download 19411207_1428_nbcr_first_bulletin_on_pearl_harbor_attack.mp3
2:30 PM (EST) News bulletin read by John Daly, CBS News The World Today (0:22):Download 19411207_1430_cbs_world_today_john_daly_reads_bulletin.mp3
4:30 PM (EST) Excerpt from NBC Red network news; dispatch from KGU, Honolulu, Hawaii (4:13):
You might also enjoy these great WWII songs that I posted to my Virtual Victrola in August 2005.
Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of Pearl Harbor-related writings, including this observation from Victor Davis Hanson:
Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq?
Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan — an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.
But there are significant differences between the “global war on terror” and World War II that do explain why victory is taking so much longer this time.
The most obvious is that, against Japan and Germany, we faced easily identifiable nation states with conventional militaries. Today’s terrorists blend in with civilians, and it’s hard to tie them to their patron governments or enablers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan, who all deny any culpability. We also tread carefully in an age of ubiquitous frightening weapons, when any war at any time might without much warning bring in a nuclear, non-democratic belligerent.
... So far the United States has encouraged its citizens to shop rather than sacrifice. The subtext is that we can defeat the terrorists and their autocratic sponsors with just a fraction of our available manpower — ensuring no real disruption in our lifestyles. That certainly wasn’t the case with the Depression-era generation who fought World War II.
And in those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated. Today, to avoid such carnage, we try to help and reform countries before our enemies have been vanquished —putting the cart of aid before the horse of victory.
Our efforts today are further complicated by conflicting Internet fatwas, terrorist militias and shifting tribal alliances; in short, we are not always sure who the enemy cadre really is — or will be.
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