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Remembering Pearl Harbor
By the Helena IR - 12/07/06

Survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 65 years ago today have been returning to the scene to honor the dead every five years for the past 40 years. Now, with those veterans in their 80s or 90s, there’s talk that this year might be their last organized visit.

Certainly for many of them, this will be their last visit, regardless. Five years is a long time.

But while time is thinning the ranks of those who where there during the attack that killed 2,390 people and wounded 1,178, sinking or heavily damaging 21 ships and 320 aircraft, time cannot diminish the importance of Dec. 7, 1941. This country’s entry into World War II, and the sacrifice of so many of its young men, changed the course of history.

There have been national traumas since then — the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the attack on the World Trade Towers — but none so decisively resulted in a wholesale revision of the world stage. Gone was the dominance of the old European powers, replaced by the United State and, for a while, the USSR. The atomic age had arrived, with the information age quick on its heels.

The outcome of World War II was the single most necessary building block of the world we know today. Had the conflict gone the other way, history would have taken a very different and a much darker turn. That’s why, despite the aging of those young soldiers who were there, Pearl Harbor won’t soon be forgotten by their descendants. It was this country’s bloody introduction to one of civilization’s most pivotal events.