Posted on: Friday, December 7, 2001

Editorial

Pearl Harbor memory must teach us today

There is particular poignancy that some 600 New Yorkers — many of them relatives of rescue workers lost in the Sept. 11 attacks — are in town today on the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

No doubt some of the New York contingent will attend activities planned to commemorate this important anniversary. Across decades and generations, witnesses to these two momentous events in American history may have a chance to meet.

The focus of the Pearl Harbor anniversary this year has been on memories and on preserving the history of the day and its place in our national tale. While the survivors of Pearl Harbor remain strong in heart and spirit, they are aging.

The day will eventually come when there will be none left to tell us directly what it was like that day. We will have only our records of their memories, so it is important to listen while we still can.

The Pearl Harbor generation has had six decades to assimilate what happened, the attack and its aftermath, and to more fully understand the lessons taught. They have much, then, to pass down to those who experienced the horrors of Sept. 11 and the rest of us who watched that tragedy unfold.

We will bounce back

First and foremost, they can teach us about the American spirit of resilience and courage; that confidence (call it Yankee cockiness, if you wish) that allowed them to bounce back after the events of Dec. 7, 1941.

It gives us reassurance that we will bounce back, as well, from the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

But they will also teach us about the tenacity of memory. While Dec. 7 is a long time ago, it burns vividly in the minds of those who witnessed the attack or were swept up in its aftermath. They can tell us that while we will go on with our lives, rebuild our hope in the future, Sept. 11 will never completely leave us.

There has been endless debate about whether Sept. 11 was "another Pearl Harbor." In some ways it was, in other ways it was totally different.

While Sept. 11 was a largely unexpected and seemingly symbolic terror attack on unknowing civilians, the Pearl Harbor attack was a carefully planned, forewarned and — in some quarters, at least — anticipated attack on strategic military targets.

In 1941, the sponsor of the attack and the focus of our wrath was clearly identifiable. The sponsor or sponsors of the Sept. 11 attacks remain shadowy and difficult to identify.

So in technique, objective and responsibility, the two attacks are quite different.

Where they are alike is in their impact on the American psyche and in their implications for the future of American national policy, both at home and abroad.

The Pearl Harbor attacks forced the United States into a global conflict and pushed it, willy-nilly, from a period of isolationism and withdrawal to a half-century of global involvement and leadership.

The same thing happened after Sept. 11. The nation went from a decade of almost complacent self-confidence and growing unilateralism on the foreign stage to a new era of multilateralism where our fortunes depend deeply on the good will of other nations.

And both attacks, surely, shattered what had been a national sense of security and invulnerability.

Domestically, Dec. 7 and Sept. 11 forced us to rethink our ideas about civil liberties and security on the home front.

Hawai'i, of course, actually went under martial law after Pearl Harbor. Across the nation, "suspicious" foreigners were rounded up and questioned. If they were of Japanese descent — alien or American citizen — they were rounded up by the tens of thousands and herded into relocation camps.

Happening again

On a much smaller scale, that is happening again today, only the target this time are people of Arabic or Middle Eastern background or of the Muslim faith.

Surely, our regrets about what we did to the Japanese Americans more than a half-century ago must inform us, and guide us, as we struggle with our security concerns today.

So as we remember Pearl Harbor today and the men and women who fought and died, we should reach out to them and ask them to teach us, to guide us, as we move into the future away from our latest national trauma.