Pearl Harbor attack remains important to remember

On a sunny Sunday morning 74 years ago, Japanese warplanes from aircraft carriers struck U.S. military installations in Hawaii, then a territory, and the United States was in a world war that the overwhelming majority of Americans believed we could, and should, avoid.

Imperial Japan wanted more territory and had conquered many Pacific nations, including China. Facist Germany and Italy, linked by treaty with Japan, were on their way to overrunning Europe via Hitler’s blitzkrieg or lightning war. German warplanes bombed London nightly.

Hawaii seems not so far away today, but it was an outpost in 1941. An attack somewhere was considered likely, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations was a surprise. As their nation’s planes bombed Hawaii, Japanese diplomats were at a scheduled meeting with Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington. The U.S. and Japanese governments were working at trying to cool the situation in the Pacific.

Kaneohe Naval Air Station was among the Oahu installations struck and the late Edward Norfleet Crews Jr. of Georgetown had vivid memories of the attack and the war in the Pacific. Mr. Crews, who died Nov. 22 at age 98, was in the U.S. Army, having joined earlier in 1941. Unlike many of his generation, he enjoyed talking about his wartime experiences. He was a decorated soldier, awarded many medals from the island-hopping invasions that culminated in Japan’s surrender in 1945. Other area Pearl Harbor survivors included the late Carlton Arnette, Murrells Inlet; Jim Jernigan, Calabash, N.C.; Joe Trupiano, Conway; Wallace Weiss, Murrells Inlet; Edward Woodbury Sr., Georgetown. A primary reason for Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is to honor the lives and service of the 2,400 killed in the sneak attack 74 years ago.

“Battleship Row” in Pearl Harbor was a major target. The Arizona lost 1,177 in the attack. The USS Arizona Memorial was built in 1962 over the sunken warship, from which oil still seeps. Not far away in Pearl Harbor is the other bookend for WWII in the Pacific, “The Mighty Mo,” the battleship Missouri on which the Japanese formally surrendered. The Missouri is the last U.S. battleship built. Aircraft carriers are the big force of modern navies.

“Remember Pearl Harbor” was a rallying slogan for Americans during WWII, when the nation came together, with allies from Australia to Russia, to win the war. And U.S. engagement “for 70-plus years has prevented a return to the great-power wars so commonplace between 1745 and 1945,” Alan W. Dowd writes in The American Legion Magazine.

No question, Americans are “not only weary but increasingly world-weary.” Disengagement, perhaps not quite the same as isolationism but with serious consequences, has driven a decline in the defense budget (3.2 percent of GDP from 4.7 percent in 2009). Dowd makes the case that “while engagement carries costs – sometimes great costs – it can yield great returns.” While U.S. defense spending is declining, China’s “has grown 170 percent the past decade” and “Russia, in the midst of a 108-percent increase in military spending, is reversing the settled outcomes of the Cold War.”

“Remember Pearl Harbor” for the service and sacrifice of millions of Americans decades ago – and of the costs of global disengagement.

This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 7:49 AM with the headline "Pearl Harbor attack remains important to remember."