Dec. 7th 1941

Pearl Harbor Day  --  71 years ago we were attacked by the Japanese Empire.  It was a sneak attack, though not TOTALLY unexpected, we really did not expect it.

Unlike what so many propagandists say, it was not a "surgical attack" against only military targets  --  women and children were hit too.

Now that the Japanese are our long time allies, we tend to downplay the anger and hatred we felt during WWII.

I still like the slogan Jerry Della Femina proposed for a Panasonic advertising campaign  --  "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor"  --  also the title of a book by Mr. Della Femina.

I had cousins who fought and were wounded in WWII, families we knew very well lost sons.  I still remember walking past houses with the Gold Star pendents hanging in the windows.  So many.  An entire generation of men and families affected by the horrors of WWII.  If you asked those guys who actually fought  --  it was not "the good war", it was something they thought had to be done  --  and, in any case, they had no choice.

I always remember the cousin of a man I worked with who would come into the office at different times saying stuff like, "hey Cuz, know what today is  --  it's the day we landed on Anzio, or some other "memorable date".  Ike would hustle him outside and calm him down.

Those who say the WWII vets were different, never saw some of the results.  They never saw the wives who said  Bob, Charlie, Nels, Harry, etc., was "never the same after the war".  They never saw the strange behavior, alcoholism, inability to keep a job, that plagued so many WWII vets.

We should honor those men  --  not as some mythic "Greatest Generation", but as men who went and did a job no man should ever be asked to do.  They should be honored for the fact so many of them actually went on to live productive lives.  A lot who actually fought didn't quite make it.