Posted on 12/07/2003 5:26:02 AM PST by sarcasm
Collective memory appears to obey the same laws of deterioration as the individual one: Time makes you forget things.
As the population of those who lived through Dec. 7, 1941, dwindles, the rest of us tend to forget the world as it was that Sunday morning when Japanese bombs and bullets rained on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor.
Time has eroded the horror of that day, when the United States was rudely awakened from its isolationist slumber and thrust into the conflict that had engulfed the rest of the world for the previous two years. Literature and the popular arts have evolved over time to give us a more comprehensive view of the events preceding Pearl Harbor and the consequences of the attack. While the context is welcome, all the context in the world can't erase the bottom line: The Japanese attack was swift, comprehensive and brutal. The objective was to knock out the Pacific Fleet so that the Japanese advance across the Pacific could continue unchecked.
That advance, like the advance of other members of the fascist axis, was bloody and thorough, with the objective being the economic and political domination of the governments and people who were in the way.
That basic fact appears to have been lost on succeeding generations of academics and others who now view World War II and its end with a notion that the Allies owe the Japanese an apology for the devastation unleashed by the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In fact, opposition is building to a display of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the Hiroshima bomb, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. With little regard for the irony of its timing, events to voice objections to the Enola Gay exhibit are planned for later this week. World War II veterans will be interested in knowing that a series of events, news conferences and presentations are packed into those four days, culminating with an event described this way in a press release distributed by organizers:
"If the Smithsonian will not address the human suffering, we will. Protesters will have full-size photos of the damage and suffering, there will be a brief explanation of why we are there, a short litany of apology and repentance, and a solemn procession outside for a rally and press conference."
Nothing wrong with that, really, but nowhere in the material released by opposition organizers is there a mention of the Japanese contribution to the eventual bombing. Nowhere is there an acknowledgement that in modern Japan, attitudes about the war and the Japanese culpability in it are hardening to the point of justifying the country's aggression in World War II.
As long as we are discussing apologies and the need for them, the Japanese government only recently — and very grudgingly — apologized for the treatment of prisoners of war and the use of captured troops and civilians as slave labor along the Imperial Army's march across Asia.
War is not pretty now, nor has it ever been. The issues that culminated in the force of arms between 1941 and 1945 are complex and best understood if examined with all eyes open. History matters, and it is ill served by one-sided attempts at inducing guilt.
Denying display space for the Enola Gay won't reverse its place in history. Overlooking or excusing or rationalizing Japanese brutality during the war years — from Nanking to Pearl Harbor to Bataan and beyond — ill serves the cause of understanding.
In 1941, the United States was forced to defend itself and it did. We don't owe anyone an apology for that.
On statesman.com:
Read the full press release that details the opposition to the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
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