Remember After Pearl Harbor

Last updated on: December 7, 2016 at 8:57 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Remember After Pearl Harbor 2016-12-07T20:57:32-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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By now on December 7, Pearl Harbor was a smoking ruin. The Empire of Japan decided to take on the United States of America in a war the Empire could not win if the United States decided to fight. Japan may have done the one thing necessary to provoke such a fight.

We are right to remember Pearl Harbor. Brave men and women fought and died. Such courage is worth remembering, but courage in the instant moment of crisis is precious, but not so rare. The persistence and courage to see the fight to the end is even more admirable.

The United States of America, including Hollywood, the Ivy League Schools, and the vast majority of Americans decided to do whatever it would take to win this war. It would mean taking tiny islands that few Americans could spell, let alone name, until we baptized them in American blood.

The Empire of Japan could not invade the mainland United States of America and conquer Washington. They were flailing away in China already, but they counted on Americans refusing to lose the hundreds of thousands of lads that it would take to conquer the vast Japanese empire.

They would seize a huge amount of territory and (like the Russians only with water substituting for snow) wear us down.

And my grandparents’ generation refused to be worn down. They fought until they won. My cousin Paul landed at D-Day, fought his way across Europe, was captured by the Germans and escaped. When he reached our lines, the United States was preparing to send him to the Pacific to invade Japan.

We were going to Tokyo whatever the cost. Pearl Harbor did not have to unite us in this way. We could have had Michael Moore instead of Frank Capra. Ivy League types like George HW Bush could have protested a bloody war for “colonialism” instead of lying about their age to join the fight. Republicans could have used the War to attack FDR instead of uniting behind him.

We could have done all those things, but we did not. We remembered Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941 and persisted until 1945 at a cost nobody of this generation can imagine in money and men. The courage showed at Pearl Harbor showed we could win the war, but the courage showed in persisting in the fight was why we won the war.

Just now, big words and pompous promises get made easily by politicians. Yet we poll continuously and the media nitpicks all we do. There is no war effort, because we push the fighting off onto the poor of Appalachia and the cities. Our elites do not fight. They sit at home and critique the war.

Our elite schools do not teach a sense of obligation to the country. Our states pay a fortune to train students who not only will not be the officer class of another war, but would refuse to fight if called. We talk victory, but lack endurance and so will not be saved.

I remember Pearl Harbor, but recall that after Pearl Harbor we spent five years winning.

God help us and save this Republic from demagogues without endurance.

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