Pearl Harbor was the first example of national cluster emotion. As that phenomenon, it lives not as a historic event but as personal recollection, not much different from a first kiss or a high-school graduation. Everyone sentient then remembers it; Americans born later have the family oral history thrust down their throats. By now, it’s our own Kabuki theater. Remember in “Stalag 17” when the bad guy is trapped just because he remembered Pearl Harbor occurring at the wrong hour of the day? We make a to-do about remembering it each year. But we don’t. Not really. What we actually do is: We Remember That We Remember Pearl Harbor.
In the American bumper-sticker mind, Pearl Harbor forever survives as the example of treachery, as if every other attack in every other war was fair by comparison. Hitler was never characterized as “treacherous,” despite his blitzkriegs across the continent. (Of course, it’s also true that Hitler wasn’t Asian.) In fact, little that became A Day in Infamy originated with Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who conceived the plan. And even before the war was over, we virtually copied the essence of Yamamoto’s design, thrusting hundreds of miles out of the way into Japanese territory, to surprise and shoot down the plane carrying Admiral Yamamoto himself in what is probably the closest we have ever come to a government-ordered assassination. And then came those two fateful mornings in August 1945: the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a slaughter of civilians that many consider more heinous–more infamous–than any attack on warships of a newly declared enemy. In “Pearl Harbor Ghosts,” a fascinating new study by Thurston Clarke, the author argues persuasively that we never would have nuked the Japanese cities if we hadn’t been so determined not to forget to remember Pearl Harbor.
If we truly remembered–as opposed to Remembering That We Remember–we would, presumably, have learned something from that day. Demonstrably, we have not. The reason that the Japanese succeeded at Pearl beyond their wildest dreams is that Americans were (a) unprepared and (b) overconfident. The reason that we were overconfident is not only because we knew we were the smartest and best people in the world, but also because we saw the Japanese as little yellow people from the rice fields who couldn’t do anything right. We have had two major wars since then. For Korea, we were (a) unprepared, and for Vietnam we were (b) overconfident. Neither have we been any more astute in that other war, the one now going on against Team Japan. We need only recall Lee Iacocca’s words in 1971 when a close friend asked him if he should get in on a Toyota dealership, and Iacocca replied, certainly not: “We’re going to kick their asses back into the Pacific Ocean.”
Notwithstanding, it may well be that the Japanese remember Pearl Harbor even less wisely than we. It would be advisable for them to keep in mind, as they bestride the economic world now, that Pearl Harbor was only a brief, hollow victory for Japan. Yamamoto, a savvy guy educated at Harvard, then posted to Washington, had traveled across the United States. He so appreciated American economic power that, almost alone, he convinced Tokyo that Japan’s only chance lay in a quick, demoralizing strike against Hawaii. But Yamamoto failed to comprehend American will. It never occurred to him that a raid on American soil would backfire and infuse Americans with determination for revenge. He had no conception of how obsessively we would make ourselves remember Pearl Harbor. As dreadful as this is to say flat out, as ugly as it is for the young sailors and soldiers who died that day, Pearl Harbor became, quickly, the ultimate photo op. It’s fashionable to say that while Japan lost the war in 1945, it won the war that followed, That may be true. It’s also true that, in the end, we won Pearl Harbor.
So, both of us go on remembering that we remember Pearl Harbor, and both of us learn nothing from it. Better, for example, that we remember the atrocities of Nanking and Bataan; then maybe there wouldn’t have been a My Lai. Better to remember that for there to be a sinking of the Arizona, Japan had to build boats and planes and plot how to cross the Pacific unnoticed; then maybe there would still be a Detroit. Let it go now. Where were we that day when we heard the news? What exactly did Mom and Dad say.? It doesn’t matter anymore. We grew too close to it, and those memories of 1941 achieve nothing but distortion and poison. Let this 50th anniversary be the last Pearl Harbor Day. It’s time to remember to forget.
