December 7, 1941 - Does the date still live in infamy?

Quintillus

Resident Medieval Monk
Super Moderator
Supporter
Joined
Mar 17, 2007
Messages
9,301
In any nation, there tend to be a handful of events that are of such prominence that not just the event, but its date, is remembered for decades or centuries to come. Those who lived through them can usually tell you what they were doing that day.

The dates vary by country, but have included:

March 15, 44 BC
July 4, 1776
July 14, 1789
November 11, 1918
September 1, 1939
June 22, 1941
May 8, 1945
November 22, 1963
September 11, 2001
February 24, 2022

And December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy", to quote FDR.

It's now the 82nd anniversary of that date, at least in Hawaii, and it had me thinking about the permanence and impermanence of these dates and anniversaries.

Some of them are national holidays, of either the celebration or commemoration variety. These tend to live the longest in public consciousness; who in the U.S. is going to forget about the 4th of July?

Others are perhaps not quite so permanent. I had to check that I had November 22, 1963 correct (JFK), but I suspect my elders who lived through it would not have. And that relates to December 7th as well. My subjective opinion is that it is not as prominent as it was, say, 25 years ago.

It makes sense. Far fewer of those who were alive at the time are still alive now. And in 9/11, there's a more recent event of a generally similar nature. But it's still interesting to me. It's not inherently a bad thing; so much has changed since then, not least Japan being an ally of the U.S. rather than an enemy. I've argued for years that the more recent 9/11 has too prominent of a place in the public consciousness, though it seems to be somewhat lighter than it was ten years ago as well; that U.S. policy and society has moved so far beyond 1941 is better than the alternative.

Did you think of Pearl Harbor today (/yesterday)? Had you thought about it in recent years? If you're young enough not to have had living relatives who served in the Pacific Theater, was it ever a date that had meaning for you?
 
I pretty much never think of it. But then Canada joined the war in 1939 so it was already old news (to my grandparents; my mom wasn't born yet and my dad was a toddler).

The only one of those 'infamous' dates I remember clearly is September 11, 2001. I'm trying and failing to connect February 24, 2022 with anything specific.
 
I pretty much never think of it. But then Canada joined the war in 1939 so it was already old news (to my grandparents; my mom wasn't born yet and my dad was a toddler).

The only one of those 'infamous' dates I remember clearly is September 11, 2001. I'm trying and failing to connect February 24, 2022 with anything specific.

Russia invaded Ukraine.

Otherwise yeah all those dates are familiar to me.
 
Last edited:
December 25, 0000

:mischief:

I didn’t think of Pearl Harbor yesterday or today, when the actual attack took place local time. I realized it about 30 minutes from leaving work after looking at the calendar.
 
Yes, I think about Dec 7th every year, but I served on ships homeported in Pearl Harbor. One of my very clear 'snapshot' memories of serving was the morning after I'd reported aboard my first ship the night before. I got cleaned up and in uniform, and on the way to the wardroom for breakfast went outside. I saw what it was too dark to see last night - all of Pearl Harbor was spread around me, including in the distance the Arizona Memorial. It occurred to me at that time that if one replaced the memorial with the ships of Battleship Row and the ships around me with their 1940s predecessors, I could have been a sailor in the Pacific Fleet just prior to the Japanese attack starting.
 
In any nation, there tend to be a handful of events that are of such prominence that not just the event, but its date, is remembered for decades or centuries to come. Those who lived through them can usually tell you what they were doing that day.

The dates vary by country, but have included:

March 15, 44 BC
July 4, 1776
July 14, 1789
November 11, 1918
September 1, 1939
June 22, 1941
May 8, 1945
November 22, 1963
September 11, 2001
February 24, 2022

And December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy", to quote FDR.

It's now the 82nd anniversary of that date, at least in Hawaii, and it had me thinking about the permanence and impermanence of these dates and anniversaries.

Some of them are national holidays, of either the celebration or commemoration variety. These tend to live the longest in public consciousness; who in the U.S. is going to forget about the 4th of July?

Others are perhaps not quite so permanent. I had to check that I had November 22, 1963 correct (JFK), but I suspect my elders who lived through it would not have. And that relates to December 7th as well. My subjective opinion is that it is not as prominent as it was, say, 25 years ago.

It makes sense. Far fewer of those who were alive at the time are still alive now. And in 9/11, there's a more recent event of a generally similar nature. But it's still interesting to me. It's not inherently a bad thing; so much has changed since then, not least Japan being an ally of the U.S. rather than an enemy. I've argued for years that the more recent 9/11 has too prominent of a place in the public consciousness, though it seems to be somewhat lighter than it was ten years ago as well; that U.S. policy and society has moved so far beyond 1941 is better than the alternative.

Did you think of Pearl Harbor today (/yesterday)? Had you thought about it in recent years? If you're young enough not to have had living relatives who served in the Pacific Theater, was it ever a date that had meaning for you?
All those dates resonate with me. You left out VJ day though. The least interesting and mostly ignored are are:

11/11/1918
9/11/2001

Some of the others are just harder to avoid.
 
I think of it, but I'm a history nut who regularly reads WW2 history and always shares Pearl Harbor & D-Day video/radio footage on the day on fb.


As far as the dates that the OP mentions:

March 15: Guessing that was Brutus' hands speaking for him
July 4, 1776: The day history began.
July 14: Mm....1789 is when the Constitution was adopted, but July 14 is also when the Bastille was stormed, so I'm guessing it has to do with that unpleasantness. Confusion to Robspierre!
November 11 1918: The day Europe momentarily stopped committing suicide
Sept 1, 1938: And when it relapsed
June 22: 1941: ...Midway is my best guess. No, that was '42. (Googles) Ohhhhhhhhhh.
May 8 '45: V-E Day.
November 22 '63: C.S. Lewis died. Also, some skirt-chaser got shot. Oh! And Aldous Huxley died.
Sept 11, 2001: My education in foreign policy began
February 24, 2022: The day the industrial-military complex in DC sighed in relief that the war on terror hadn't ended their revenue stream.
 
I think of it, but I'm a history nut who regularly reads WW2 history and always shares Pearl Harbor & D-Day video/radio footage on the day on fb.


As far as the dates that the OP mentions:

March 15: Guessing that was Brutus' hands speaking for him
July 4, 1776: The day history began.
July 14: Mm....1789 is when the Constitution was adopted, but July 14 is also when the Bastille was stormed, so I'm guessing it has to do with that unpleasantness. Confusion to Robspierre!
November 11 1918: The day Europe momentarily stopped committing suicide
Sept 1, 1938: And when it relapsed
June 22: 1941: ...Midway is my best guess. No, that was '42. (Googles) Ohhhhhhhhhh.
May 8 '45: V-E Day.
November 22 '63: C.S. Lewis died. Also, some skirt-chaser got shot. Oh! And Aldous Huxley died.
Sept 11, 2001: My education in foreign policy began
February 24, 2022: The day the industrial-military complex in DC sighed in relief that the war on terror hadn't ended their revenue stream.
That was the day that Doctor Who premiered.
 
June 22 was the date Napoleon crossed the Nemanus River starting his invasion of Russia in 1812
It was the date Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941
It was the date the Bagratian Offensive started in 1944, the Operation that obliterated Germany's Army Group Center and drove the last major German forces out of the Soviet Union.

Basically, it was the worst possible day of the year to be a soldier in Eastern Europe in the last 300 or so years . . .

And 9 May 1945 is regularly celebrated as Victory Day in Russia, although the military parade used to celebrate it is down to a single tank both this year and last.

For my father, 7 December meant nothing: he was stationed in Manila on 8 December 1941, on the other side of the International Date Line when the Japanese bombed Manila and Clark Field there: that's the date he remembered all his life.
 
This day lives in infamy but the Americans did incinerate two cities with radioactive fire to make up for it.
 
This day lives in infamy but the Americans did incinerate two cities with radioactive fire to make up for it.
But the bombing of Tokyo inflicted more casualties than either nuclear weapon, and the 8th Air Force had to avoid bombing two cities to leave targets for the two nuclear weapons: the conventional bombing campaign had flattened or burned out every major city in Japan except the cultural icon of Kyoto and the two Targets.

And the shock effect of the two nuclear strikes brought an end to the war before the invasion of the Japanese islands, for which the lowest estimates assumed casualties in the millions among the Japanese population and 100,000 to 500,000 among the invading force.

To quote someone who knew what he was talking about:

"War is Hell and you cannot refine it." - W. T. Sherman
 
the 8th was on its way to Japan when the war ended , most unhappy that they were expected to fly B-17Gs when the future was already there with the B-29s . Lemay's outfit was the 20th , ı think . The Japanese war ended with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria , burning down the hopes of the Kwantung Army to be left alone as a bulwark against Global Communism while it was to be the fault of the Home Islands to have attacked America . Check the way how Germans could be "back" in 10 years , just like the Japanese were . Japanese Army was like "strange" as told to weird old friends of mine by those who had heard it from those who were like within 10 000 miles back at the day or something .

japanese outright war criminals / Americans would be worse but they had made theirs on "soft power" .
 
History is slipping away from us because we no longer read. One war to erase the technology and what memories will be left? It will be as if we never existed.
 
Ancient History is anything too early for us to personally remember.

I was forcibly reminded of this when I was part of the 'War College' lecture series at the ORIGINS gaming convention in the late 1990s - early 2000s. Gamer came up to one of the professors who had just finished a lecture on Air Forces in WWII (he was from the USAF's Air University in Montgomery and really knew his subject) and asked about "that war that happened a long time ago" (the speaker was, I estimate, in his early 20s).
"You mean World War Two?" asked the professor
"No, it was after that".
"Uh, Vietnam?"
"No, after that."
- after some more questioning, it turned out he was talking about the Gulf War of 1991 - Current Events to the professor and me, but already 10 Years Ago to the Gamer, or when he was about 11 - 14 years old and had no memory of it whatsoever - Ancient History for him.
 
The irony in that being that I would imagine a war college would be the one place where wars from ancient history would actually be useful to learn about and not just an idle curiosity. And I say that as someone who enjoys such idle curiosities.

But yes, you must remember that there are entire generations, yes plural, of people old enough to vote that were born literally in a different century than most of the stuff we consider to have happened in our lifetimes. Hell, if you assume a teenage pregnancy the Civilization series could just about produce people who are old enough to start having babies of their own. Now that's scary.
 
Increasingly people are inhabitants of their own time only. My parents were both one of eight children and, in their generation, the average number of kids were still above replacement. But once the generations of my cousins found television, drugs, and computers this cratered. Now from this family nobody even knows of the existence of the latter generations. Did so and so ever have any kids? Many didn't marry and if so divorced and kids, who knows, some no, some yes. Some don't even know if they had kids. And that even before you factor in changing sexual proclivities and genders.

And so, to a people like this how could December 7th have meaning? Eighteen inches from where I type this, hangs a WW2 uniform jacket, worn by my father. Why do I keep it?

December 7, 1941, still lives in my closet. When I die someone not related to me will toss it into the bin, and that is the best-case scenario.
Increasingly people are inhabitants of their own time only.
 
The irony in that being that I would imagine a war college would be the one place where wars from ancient history would actually be useful to learn about and not just an idle curiosity. And I say that as someone who enjoys such idle curiosities.

But yes, you must remember that there are entire generations, yes plural, of people old enough to vote that were born literally in a different century than most of the stuff we consider to have happened in our lifetimes. Hell, if you assume a teenage pregnancy the Civilization series could just about produce people who are old enough to start having babies of their own. Now that's scary.
No need to assume Teenage anything. Sid Meier's Civilization (I) came out in 1991, Civilization II came out in 1996. Even the second, then, is now 28 years old - the kid born in Civilization Time is now old enough to have their own kid - a Civilization Grandchild.

God, I feel old . . .
 
Back
Top Bottom