A Day of Infamy

Today is December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, "a day which will live in infamy", in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States in 1941. I wasn't aware of the date until I fired up my computer and looked at the date on my blog. I had completely forgotten the date. I had seen nothing on TV or heard anything on the radio concerning the attack on Pearl Harbor Naval base which plunged the United States into World War II. It certainly changed my life, at the ripe old age of 2 I lost my father for the next 4 years while he went to war. Had the war not come, I'm sure Pa would have stayed in the sawmill until he retired and we would have remained in Bend until we were out of school. We might have even gone to work in the sawmill until we retired. As it was, when Pa returned from the South Pacific in 1945 he was restless and unhappy with his job at the mill and we began an oddessy that took us all over the state and ended with Pa losing a leg in a logging accident. I think that my brothers and I saw that there was a better way to make a living than working in the mill or the woods. So we all went to college and got degrees and jobs where we used our brains instead of our brawn. It may seem that I have drifted away from my title, but I'll get there.

We seem as a nation to have forgotten Pearl Harbor and have replaced it with 9-11. That's understandable since Pearl Harbor was 67 years ago and 9-11 was only 7. Who knows what disaster will replace 9-11 in our minds, I only hope that it's 60 years or so from now. I hope our wounds will have healed by the next one.