Remembering Pearl Harbor

Seventy-seven years ago this morning, warplanes belonging to the Empire of Japan bombed the island of Oahu, with particular emphasis on the U.S. naval facility at Pearl Harbor and the fleet there anchored. A surprise attack on a nation with which Japan was not then at war, it was the geopolitical equivalent of a sucker punch, a failed knock-out blow that led eventually to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Each year COTTonLINE urges our readers to remember this dishonorable perfidy. We need to learn this lesson of Pearl Harbor and stay on guard, particularly since as a world power it is occasionally necessary for us to act in ways other nations find inconvenient, or even threatening. 

Bottom line: it not only could happen again, it did on 9/11. My personal way of remembering is, whenever possible, not to purchase Japanese-made goods.