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Does Infamy Have An Expiration Date?

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By KYLE MARTIN

Hernando Today

Published: December 7, 2008

On this day 67 years ago, the warm shallow waters of Pearl Harbor were set ablaze with the oil of sinking ships.
Japanese Zeroes zipped through arching columns of thick black smoke, dropping torpedoes and firing a hail of bullets on sailors scurrying for cover.

By the time the sneak attack had ended, 2,345 Marines, sailors and soldiers lay dead. Between all the armed forces, 1,007 were wounded.

The following day, President Roosevelt delivered a somber six-minute speech asking Congress to declare war against the Empire of the Rising Sun. Most memorably, he declared Dec. 7 "a date which will live in infamy."

But does infamy have an expiration date?

Some 2,500 Americans took an exam this spring to test their knowledge of our country's history, civics and politics -71 percent failed. The typical score was 49 percent; elected officials averaged 44 percent.

While none of the questions from the past three years involved Pearl Harbor, there were similar history questions. The questions focused, for example, about the years that Jamestown was settled or when Abraham Lincoln lived.

"Americans don't do very well with dates," said Richard Brake, director of university stewardship for the group that gave the exam, Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Pearl Harbor is a little different because it was an attack by foreign enemies. Americans are aware of the broad, basic fundamentals of what happened.

"But would they know who did it and what precipitated it? I would not be confident to say that," Brake said. "The danger is that this is something that should be remembered."

American history is not memorizing dates, it's about looking at the pattern of past events and how they apply to today. The Japanese felt pressured to attack because the United States was expanding its interests in the Pacific. Today, America is heavily dependent on oil coming from the Middle East.

It's important to remember these things so that you can compare and contrast America's current position, Brake said.

"You cannot have critical thinking without facts," he said.

One of the factors at play in America's forgetfulness is the advent of the Internet, said Mark Bauerlein, author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30."

Adolescents in this information age are going through the same period of self-focus as every generation before. This difference is that the Internet feeds that self-consciousness so completely that it's harder for this generation to unplug and look at the big picture.

To care about Pearl Harbor and why it happened "you have to get out of yourself a little bit," Bauerlein said.

The problem is that by the time 20-somethings get a job and are forced to mature, they're too busy to take the time and read about history. High school and college are the best time to absorb that global picture, but it's spent wrapped up on MySpace, Bauerlein said.

"It's a precious few years that they open their minds," he said.

Historian Michael Gannon, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida, believes the attacks on Pearl Harbor are "too well known to be forgotten."

Gannon, author of "Pearl Harbor Betrayed," lists several reasons, the most current being the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. There was an instant parallel drawn between the two that cannot be readily dismissed, he said.

Like the attacks in New York City, Pearl Harbor raised a sense of vulnerability. Americans had long relied on the two oceans as an effective defense and that feeling of security was snatched away on Dec. 7. Similarly, there was a sneakiness about Pearl Harbor that offended Americans.

"That was just profoundly unfair business," Gannon said. "Stand up like a man and say we're going to attack you and start slugging it out."

Walter Cunningham, a survivor of the Pearl Harbor attacks, also doubts that Pearl Harbor's infamy will one day fade away. The USS Arizona memorial continues to grow in popularity and attract millions of people from around the globe, he said.

"I don't think Pearl Harbor will ever leave us in total memory," he said.

Reporter Kyle Martin can be reached at 352-544-5271 or kmartin@hernandotoday.com

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