Remembering the 80th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

Eighty years ago today, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor designed to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet so Japanese forces could invade Southeast Asia and the Philippines with little interference. The Day of Infamy dragged the United States into the largest and deadliest war in history. Men and women served and died in places around the world they had never heard of before 7 December. For the first time, Americans witnessed the brutality humanity is capable of as they liberated POW camps in the Pacific and Buchenwald and Dachau in Europe.

That war also created the Greatest Generation, veterans lucky enough to have returned from combat who shaped this nation. These men and women helped America become a superpower and eventually defeat the second most dangerous threat to freedom around the globe. They built the American middle class and laid a foundation for our prosperity that was greater than what they had grown up with during the Great Depression. Despite the flaws in our political and economic systems today, what we have achieved in the 21st century was based on the foundation of that generation which served in World Wat II.

I was fortunate to have grown up surrounded by veterans of World War II. My Uncle Bob, who served with the Marines at Okinawa, was one of only eighteen men to walk away from the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill. My father's best friend nearly lost his life at Bastogne. I heard endless war stories as a kid and came to admire their courage and what they endured. It's what inspired my love for history and eventually led me to join the Central Intelligence Agency. 

Sadly, three generations after World War II began, few veterans of that conflict are still alive. Out of the six million who served in that war, fewer than three hundred thousand are alive today and are passing away at a rate of approximately three hundred a day. Just last week, the last soldier from The Band of Brothers died. Soon, World War II will be as distant a memory as The Civil War with no one around who remembers those years.

I visited Pearl Harbor back in 1993. As I stood on the Arizona Memorial, I watched an older Japanese gentleman showing his wife the mountain pass that the IJN planes came through to launch their attack. I still regret not asking him if he was here on that day and would he be willing to tell me his side of the story. But while writing this, I recalled how serene Pearl Harbor was on the day I took the tour, the same way it looked moments before the first bombs fell on Battleship Row on 7 December 1941.

As I wrote this, I  I ask that you take a few moments this morning to think about the men and women who have served and are serving in our armed forces. They have taken on a burden and accepted a responsibility not all of us are willing to bear.Billy Ray Cyrus summed it up beautifully with his lyrics, "All gave some, some gave all."

Thank you all who served and let's hope we never experience another World War II.