Dec. 7 • Sept. 11
Let the lessons learned from Pearl Harbor serve us well

By John Griffin
Former editorial page editor of The Advertiser

This year's Pearl Harbor observance of the 60th anniversary of the Dec. 7 attack by Japan is not so much a Last Hurrah for the dwindling number of survivors. Rather, it should be seen as a transition for all of us.

Former enemies Richard Fiske, a Pearl Harbor survivor, and Zenji Abe, a former Japanese pilot, reunite as friends. This week, Pearl Harbor survivors once again will reunite in Hawai'i. Advertiser library photo • June 12, 2000

I hope not. For not only are Pearl Harbor survivors (including aging thousands who were Hawai'i civilians in 1941) still among us, the lessons of that day remain vivid. High among them are the needs for preparedness, for resolve and for hope.

Comparisons of the two tragic events began almost as soon as hijacked airliners hit their targets on 9/11. With many New York police officers and firefighters here this week as vacationing guests, and with the Pearl Harbor military survivors holding a major conference, the chances for sharing can be great among generations of heroes.

Certainly the 9/11 attacks should not be called "a new Pearl Harbor," because the differences in methods and civilian slaughter need to be emphasized.

Indeed, Japanese who flew in the 1941 military attack on military targets here will be speakers at this week's survivors' conference in Waikiki. It's hard to envision al-Qaida members at some similar gathering in New York City 60 years from now.

Still, there are some common lessons and cautions from the two tragedies.

For example, the Pearl Harbor attack ended a long era of misguided American isolationism; 9/11 did something like that for the new Bush administration, which was arrogantly going it alone in the world.

Our whole nation now sees that geography and technology no longer protect us. For Hawai'i, that's an old lesson for new generations.

And we must realize that wars present their own terrible logic. Pearl Harbor launched a struggle where there were worse aberrations on all sides: civilian targets bombed, prisoners tortured, etc. It climaxed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The aftermath of 9/11 is still unfolding. Early military success in Afghanistan is encouraging, but we are a long way from beating back world terrorism and dealing with the political and economic conditions that spawn it. More immediately, the anthrax scare is an early warning of other potential terrorism here at home.

Yet there are also hopeful lessons from Pearl Harbor and the war that followed.

I was reminded of this in reading a current issue of the monthly California Journal. In featured articles, executive editor A.G. Block and author-journalist Lou Cannon detail some dark sides of World War II, including internment of Japanese Americans. But this point is featured:

"Modern California was born in the flames and rubble of Pearl Harbor, brought to life by that second gold rush" of new industry and migrating American workers.

Much of modern Hawai'i also came from the war, where our young men went off to fight and saw broader horizons, where outsiders brought fresh ideas, where new businesses were started or planned, and where older demands for labor and social justice simmered.

Looking ahead now, it's hard to be so hopeful. As the California Journal article notes:

"Unlike the 1940s, this new war does not bring with it the promise of economic salvation — quite the contrary. ... This new war isn't about hardware. This war is about people and their attitudes."

Moreover, just as World War II drove home the point that the United States is a Pacific nation, the war on terrorism underscores that we now live in an inescapable global environment.

One important irony in all this is that the post-9/11 Bush administration has been forced to take a less isolationist and more cooperative view of the world. This at a time when a world recession poses new problems for the American model of free-trade globalism. Some say that, at the least, the new war has put globalism at a crossroads. Globalism may still be inevitable, but it could use reforms.

Anti-terrorism could be a long struggle, one more akin to the 40-year Cold War but with new fronts and dangers within the United States.

Among the concerns increasingly voiced are that our Bill of Rights and other democratic standards we live by will suffer more than minor collateral damage. Both liberal and conservative observers are warning that the danger from an overzealous Bush administration is not just for Arabs and Muslims among us but for everyone. That is yet another front.

On that front here, I find some comfort in how Hawai'i Nisei veterans of World War II have for the past year been sponsoring a series of forums titled "Universal Values for a Democratic Society."

In this way, those of our so-called "Greatest Generation," with help from the UH Colleges of Arts and Sciences, have been passing on valuable ideas and lessons in human rights to others, including gatherings of schoolchildren.

Just as this war may offer President Bush a chance for greatness no one envisioned before 9/11, so its challenges could also offer opportunities for a new American Greatest Generation.

Much depends on staying power for the long struggle. Heroism can be accomplished in short moments of bravery. Greatness comes with accomplishment over time.

That should be part of Hawai'i's thoughts as we honor the Dec. 7 survivors and those who faced the horror in New York and Washington. Maybe we can even coin some new slogan for the ages:

"Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember Sept. 11."

For they are related.

John Griffin writes frequently for the editorial pages.