Remembering Pearl Harbor

 Seventy two years ago the Japanese bombed American ships in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu.  The act of war brought the United States into what was truly a world wide war, and launched our country on an industrial superiority trajectory that has just recently begun to wane. 

The attack was the surprise of my grandparents' generation, and I think can be likened to the attacks of September 11th for my generation.  The  way we view the world was changed in some alarming and in some unknowable ways.  The prejudice that pervaded the 1940's and 50's against the Japanese is paralleled by the prejudice that Muslims are experiencing in America today.  It is a process that is conscious and unconscious.  Some things we know we are doing, and for those things we can intellectually examine and change.  It is the unconscious things that worry me--Islamophobia does not help anyone; not the object of the phobia nor the one who is fearful.  Fear is never the solution that works best, at least not in the long run.   Not to mention that it certainly doesn't fix the situations that led up to the attacks.  We have a dysfunctional government that reflects a conflicted populace.  We can't yet agree on what the most constructive path forward is, but in the meantime, best that we remember past surprises, and what happened as a result of them.  Are we proud of interning Japanese citizens during World War II?  What should we have done differently?  May the past teach us how we should go forward in the present.