Dwain Northey (Gen X)

This was a line solemnly stated by Frankin Deleno Roosevelt on Dec 8^th, 1941, one day after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii Dec 7^th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy.

The is and was a seminal date in history and the event the finally pulled the United States into WWII.  December 8^th, 1941, was the day we entered the war declaring war against Japan it wasn’t until December 11^th that congress formally declared war against Germany.

This monumental date has few survivors that actually witness or heard FDR’s famous speech and now the events are relegated to History Books and all-day programs on the History Channel. I recently realized that my Father and my Son both missed a world changing days in history by 4 years, my father was born in 1945 so he wasn’t born to witness the events of Dec 7^th, my son was born in 2005 so he wasn’t present for 9/11. Both have had to hear accounts of those days from their respective parents and read about them in history books.

I don’t that we still retain the lessons learned for WWII because the institutional memory of those events is rapidly passing from this plain of existence. This past week Henry Kissinger passed, although he was a horrible person, he had memories of WWII and a former President that actually served as a submarine officer in WWII, Jimmy Carter is 99 years old and will be shedding this mortal coil and joining his belove wife Roselin soon after a life that can only be celebrated as one that we can only hope to emulate.

Will we forget the lessons on 9/11/2001 eighty years from now when most of us the bore witness that terrible day. Did we learn any lessons from that day? That is the bigger question.

President George W. Bush’s comments after 9/11 don’t ring with the clarion call FDR’s words after Pearl Harbor, “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” Bush could have united the world after 9/11 as FDR solidified the Allies in WWII but we all know how that turned out.

I hope the institutional memory of the horrors of war stays with us so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.