65 Years Ago Today

The Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack upon the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Here we see the USS Arizona burning.

This is the destroyer USS Shaw at the moment when its main magazine blew up, destroying the ship.

This is the USS Nevada silhouetted against the burning USS Shaw.

Her crew abandons the sinking battleship USS California.

After Pearl Harbor the United States converted its economy to a total war footing and put 16 million men under arms (when the population was only a little more than half of what it is today). We went to war with the intention of crushing our enemies and would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

The nation entered the war with the willingness to spend whatever price in blood and treasure was necessary and to take however long was necessary to win a total victory over our enemies.

Enemy soldiers captured on the battlefield were placed into POW camps without the right to legal counsel or hearings in US courts. Unlawful combatants, those not wearing uniforms and not obeying the rules of warfare, were shot on sight.

When victory was achieved the Allied powers set about reconstructing the societies of the vanquished Axis nations. In the case of Japan they were forced to make significant changes to their national religion.

All of this was accomplished by a nation which was caught in the grip of a severe economic depression at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Today the United States is nearly twice as populous as it was in 1941. We are orders of magnitude more wealthy and productive. Our military is the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. It is better armed and trained than any other fighting force on the planet. Our military is so powerful, due to our advanced technology, that an army of 100000 today can do what it took millions to do 65 years ago.

Our nation is so wealthy and powerful that we can keep a large army in the field fighting indeffinately without our civilian population having to give up so much as one PS3 or iPod.

Yet today our nation is engaged in a life-or-death struggle against an enemy as malignant and evil as any we have ever faced and our people cannot be bothered to sustain the effort when the only price most of us have to pay is watching some highly biased mainstream news reporting which makes us feel uncomfortable.

Why is it that we who have so much more than those who came before us are so much less than they were?