Posted on 12/05/2011 7:23:19 PM PST by massmike
“Remember Pearl Harbor” was the Second World War’s most enduring slogan – sported on buttons, blazoned across billboards and blared from the radio in one of the era’s popular songs. (“Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we go to meet the foe. Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we did the Alamo.”)
Remember Pearl Harbor? Remember the Alamo? Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule? But how can you remember what you never knew? Americans are tragically ignorant of our past.
The deficit in historical knowledge is at least as ominous as the national debt. Sheep have no memory – individual or collective. They are creatures to be sheared and, ultimately, consumed.
In most U.S. schools, assuming it’s taught at all, history is presented as multicultural mélange. Instead of learning of our greatness, we obsess over our failures – at times real, at times imaginary. How can schools teach about the Constitution or the industrial revolution in America when they’re so busy doing penance for the slave trade, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and Jim Crow?
As Churchill is reputed to have said, “History is written by victors.” The left reigns victorious in the public schools, higher education, and the news and entertainment media. Thus have its myths become conventional wisdom.
In his oft misquoted axiom, American philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those with a basic knowledge of history at least have the option of remembering it or not. But what of those who were never taught the past in the first place?
(Excerpt) Read more at grasstopsusa.com ...
Definitely, the photo footage or Bush the elder showing his culpability exists.....Japanese just got their licks in early.
I remenber it like it was yesterday, I was listeneing to the radio when they announced it and I ran into the kitchen and told my mother that the japs just bombed Hawaii!!!
Reminds me of the old MAD magazine cartoon of 43 years ago.
FDR is bowing and apologizing to Hirohito for the damage to his pilot’s ears when American ships blew up in Pearl Harbor.
“Where were those Concentration Camps located?”
There was a couple of large ones in California.
>> Of course I remember when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Oh, jeez. What dumbass said that?
President John Blutarsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vtWB4owdE
(You’ve never seen “Animal House?”)
My uncle had joined the Navy days before Pearl Harbor. In an essay he wrote a few years ago he recalled six weeks of basic training crammed into one because they had to get manpower into the war.
His ship, the USS Colorado, sailed from Bremmerton, WAshington. “After about two days, I noticed the weather getting hotter and the sea was getting smoother and its color changing to a deeper blue. Some of the older sailors said it looked like we were headed to Hawaii ...”
When they reached Hawaii, “We steamed into a navy shipyard and saw the damage the Japanese had done. We picked up a harbor pilot and followed a motor launch. Every once in awhile the launch would stop and pull something into the launch. It was a sailor coming to the surface. We were seeing the results of war and our possible fate for the first time.”
“We sailed up the channel past destroyed buildings which were still smoking, past destroyed airplanes and then we came to battleship row. Past teh USS Maryland, USS Nevada, and other ships still smoking with large gaping holes. There was so much damage it is hard to describe ...” (by Giles Phelps, 1923-1998)
He was just 18 at the time and had dropped out of school to join the Navy. He had always dreamed of going to sea. I don’t think going to war was part of his dream, but like so many others, did his duty as best he could.
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