Gongol.com Archives: December 2023
December 8, 2023
Pearl Harbor Day still matters for peace
It is believed that only one survivor of the USS Arizona is still alive today, 82 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The passage of time means that only a few years remain until no first-hand memories of that day remain, and yet America continues to mark the dreadful attack and its 2,403 victims, as well we should. ■ Commemorating the events of that day doesn't whitewash the Allied conduct of the war that ensued, which included merciless bombing campaigns against places like Dresden and Tokyo. Nor does it subtract from the deeply productive friendly peace constructed after the war, which made Japan the world's fourth-largest economy and created an alliance regarded now as the "cornerstone of U.S. security interests in Asia". ■ The opposite is more likely to be true: Honest remembrance serves as a reminder why an international friendship built on common values is preferable to destructive hostility. It may also be the case that it helps to illustrate why wars must sometimes be brought to painful but decisive conclusions. ■ Perhaps, in the extreme case, an aggressor must be brought not to a stalemate but to a crushing defeat before rebuilding can begin. What would have happened had Japan (and Germany) been merely contained into a ceasefire, rather than compelled into unconditional surrender? Detente may have prevailed in the subsequent decades, but we cannot be certain that anything like friendship might have resulted. ■ Remembering the past -- including the shortcomings, foibles, and even the atrocities committed by all sides -- is how we remind ourselves that humans and our endeavors are never perfect, but that we have choices about the directions in which we choose to strive. We can drive toward what we know to be good, or we can run away from it. Only when we know that our choices will have consequences, and possess the certainty that those consequences will be remembered, do we begin to hear the necessary voice of conscience that compels us to move in the right direction, however imperfectly.
