DAY OF INFAMY

Sixty five years ago at 8 am Honolulu time Pearl Harbor was attacked signaling the entry of The United States into WWII. An era is coming to an end today as this year marks the last reunion of Pearl Harbor survivors meeting at the USS Arizona Memorial. These heroes who remember the sacrifice and valor that Americans showed on the Day of infamy are slowly dwindling in number as age takes its toll on these last survivors of the epic struggle for freedom that history calls World War Two. These brave men and women who willingly stood in harms way giving of themselves and in thousands of instances giving the ultimate sacrifice of their life to fight for their country but even more so to fight for a belief in liberty and the blessing of freedom that we as a nation have stood for since our birth in 1776. As we remember those who stood in defense of our liberties on that December morning in 1941 the question arises as I think of those in that number who have already gone and as that number shrinks with each passing year, do we as Americans in their passing forget why they sacrificed and what they lived, fought and died for ? Even four short years later in 1945 as WWII was coming to an end the nation that had given of so many thousands of its finest men and women in the cause of liberty had already come to think that a Pearl Harbor could not happen to this nation again because the forces that caused it were vanquished by the bloodshed and sacrifice of war. Yet another Pearl Harbor did happen as a second Day of infamy came upon The United States on September 11, 2001. As we think about this 65 anniversary of Pearl Harbor and as the number of veterans of that world conflict fade each day are we facing a time when a nation forgets those who have sacrificed and in that forgetting become complacent in the fight for liberty and stand that we as a nation must take in order to insure these liberties for future generations. How many in the post Baby Boom generations do not understand or even know of the significance of Pearl Harbor and why we as a nation took up arms to fight evil during WWII ? As we move in time further and further from that tragic moment in 1941 and those who survived its devastation and remember first hand the rallying cry that it brought to the cause of liberty are we forgetting why we made that heroic stand against evil and why we must continue in this troubled world of today to make that same stand ? One has to wonder in 20, 30, 40 or 65 years as the tragedy of 9/11 becomes a distant national memory will future generations suffer from the same lack of knowledge and memory of the sacrifices made in Pennsylvania, Washington and New York as many in today's generations have concerning Pearl Harbor and the fight for freedom in WWII ? Why is it that it takes a national tragedy like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to rally this nation to the cause of freedom that has been the reason for the existence of this nation since its beginning ? Why as time fades from those tragedies do flags stop waving and the nation drifts back into the complacency that allows us to drop our guard against those evil forces that would seek our destruction as a nation and the extinction of the very freedoms that we take for granted and in whose light we live forgetting the sacrifice necessary to keep those freedoms which is the danger of our complacency ? Even today as we move from the tragedy of 9/11 just as those who moved from the tragedy of Pearl Harbor our nation in our complacency and collective loss of memory does not accept or believe that a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 can happen again because we take our freedoms so much for granted and cannot accept that evil would want to take them away from us nor that those freedoms though powerful are fragile and only our continual vigilance in liberties cause can and will insure this nations survival for future generations. That is why we fought after Pearl Harbor and why we fight today after 9/11 and why we must never forget what those who have fought and are fighting do for us in protecting our ability as a nation to live a life that can become complacent and can take for granted the freedom and liberty that thousands of heroic Americans have bought and paid for through the sacrifice and the carnage of war. Nor can we forget the innocents who did not volunteer to fight but simply because they lived in a land of freedom became a sacrifice for liberty as evil forces sought to destroy this nation. We cannot forget nor can we take for granted what they have done regardless of national complacency or the march of time that distances us from national tragedy. They deserve our pride in them, our loyalty to them and our praise for them in their eternal vigilance in defending our freedom and our flag both in memoriam and in the battlefields and battles for freedom being waged today!

Ken Taylor