By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO –Is our legacy gift to the naval and other survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack the indiscriminate disposal of the partial remains of US servicepersons who were killed in Afghanistan or Iraq into toxic waste dumps? The assault on Pearl occurred exactly seventy years ago this past week, on December 7, 1941. Do we further honor the thousands of victims and those who managed to live with the sloppy, even ghoulish burying of our soldiers today in the wrong graves at Arlington National Cemetery?
We know historically that the Japanese waylay, merciless and unrelenting, on Hawaii in 1941 turned out to be the catalyst that awakened the United States into action against the combined and lethal Axis of Japan, Germany, and Italy.
While pounding our chests that our entry saved Europe and the rest of the free world from the death grip of Japanese fascism and Nazi racial brutality (notwithstanding the uncommon prior bravery of Britain and the already bloody commitment of Canadian troops since 1939), should we not be choking with shame, anger, and mortification at these revelations of military culpability in the incomprehensible desecration of young American heroes?
One of the key refrains from presidential candidates this year—hollow and meaningless—is how “special” America is. In near biblical terms, they imply a kind of “chosen” status for this nation [and by implication, a certain unholy or uninspired ethos to the current chief executive]. They even invoke the historically impaired notion that America’s canonical greatness is particularly exemplified in the way we saved Europe from itself seventy years ago—even though some probably don’t even know that we waited 27 months after Britain began valiantly to hold off the Nazis till we even got involved. Not to mention the decisive tenacity of the Russian army on the frozen eastern front.
These knee-jerk philosophers likely don’t even get it that it took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get us interested in the genocidal Germans or that their Republican party voted almost down party lines NO against President Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Act that kept our allies in Britain and Canada and Australia at least afloat until Churchill (and the Japanese) finally woke us up to our responsibilities in this world.
Now, as the revelation of dumped body parts and false crypts permeates the news, we hear nothing from our Pearl Harbor patriot-politicians. Ironically, the military, without a draft, is over-subscribed—largely due to the fact that so many young American men and women can’t find regular jobs in their own land.
Thank you, Pearl Harbor survivors, and praise the memory of your fallen comrades. There was a time when our devotion to you was a lot more than hot air and political ignorance.
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Rabbi Kamin is a San Diego-based freelance writer. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com