Dec 7, 2022 3 min read

The emphases in this country on the beginning of World War II generally center around Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the infamous Japanese aerial sneak attack on the American naval fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Actually, the war already was in progress for more than two years before that fateful day. The war is regarded as having begun on Sept. 3, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to the Nazis’ invasion of Poland two days earlier.

The United States declared war on Japan Dec. 8, 1941, and three days later – Dec. 11, 1941 – made the same declaration regarding Germany, following Germany’s declaration against the United States earlier on the 11th.

Still, it is Dec. 7, 1941, that rightly remains the day of infamy because of the horrendous cost to this country. As Smithsonian magazine wrote in its December 2016 issue:

“By the end (of the attack), 19 U.S. ships lay destroyed or damaged, and among the 2,403 Americans dead or dying were 68 civilians. Nothing as catastrophically unexpected, as self-image shattering, had happened to the nation in its 165 years. ‘America is speechless,’ a congressman said the next day, as the smell of smoke, fuel and defeat hovered over Pearl. Long-held assumptions about American supremacy and Japanese inferiority had been holed as surely as the ships. ‘With astounding success,’ Time wrote, ‘the little man has clipped the big fellow.'”

Today, the world is witnessing another example of “clipping the big fellow” as tiny Ukraine continues to inflict heavy losses on Russia in response to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s obsession about putting Ukraine under his country’s proverbial umbrella. If that were to happen, the stage would be set for Russia to act similarly against the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia and then move on from there, in a way similar to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s taking control of Germany’s neighbors in the run-up to full-fledged World War II.

But imperialism-minded Japan in 1941 miscalculated the strength and resolve of the United States when it set out to weaken and humiliate this nation via its misguided Pearl Harbor mission, and Germany eventually learned the hard way also, not only indirectly because of what happened at Pearl but also as a result of defeats it suffered before Dec. 7, 1941.

For example, on May 27, 1941, British ships sank the state-of-the-art German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France; the German death toll was more than 2,000.

Hitler had hoped that the Bismarck, launched Feb. 14, 1939, would herald the rebirth of the German surface battle fleet. Instead, the ship, along with its loss of life at the hands of the British, was a major early setback, just like the Russians’ early, major loss of life and war equipment in Ukraine delivered the reality that the target of its aggression would not quickly succumb to its perceived superior strength.

The Pearl Harbor attack and the immediate events that followed unleashed patriotic fervor, just like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It would be tremendous if such patriotic fervor could once again return to this divided country, but without having to remember terrible losses like the attack on Pearl and the terrorist attacks inflicted.

That is a good thought for today, 81 years after that fateful December day – actually for any other day as well.