Tag Archives: Pearl Harbor

What Is a “Just” War?

The Second World War was horrible as are all wars. People were tortured, fire-bombed, and killed on the battlefield. Surely, though, we might describe our efforts to help Britain and those fighting the Nazis in France, Scandinavia, and other places, as fighting a “just war.”

Nazi evils were blatant: killing even innocent children simply because of the religious heritage they were born with. In the beginning, though, as Hitler conquered European countries and Japan invaded China, some Americans were unconvinced that it really was “our” war. After all, we weren’t being directly victimized.

Then the German ally, Japan, bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I remember my mother recounting the family’s experiences on December 7, 1941. A neighbor, whose husband was in the U.S. army, called her and told her to turn on the radio. Listening to U.S. President Roosevelt talk of the Pearl Harbor attack as a “day that would live in infamy,” I imagine they thought about how their families would be affected. My father was too old to serve in this war. My father’s younger brother, however, would no doubt be called up to join the army. We had cousins and other relatives and friends who would be drafted. The understanding dawned on my family and other Americans that nations were prepared to fight us until we surrendered to them and they would take over our country and our government.

If any nation had viable reasons for going to war, it surely was the United States in 1941. That outlook has followed us ever since. Yet, this war wasn’t a war between two kingdoms trying to take the land of the other. We were literally fighting to survive as a nation.

Then, as the United States became a world power after the war’s end, we were blessed with leaders who sincerely wanted a world in which no wars threatened innocent people, in which no young people were robbed of adulthood. Obviously, the task has had mixed success. We have certainly fought wars, but, thankfully, as yet, no “world” war.

I wonder if our success at winning what might be called a “just” war—against Hitler and his allies—might have encouraged the idea that wars perhaps may not be such a bad thing. After all, if we hadn’t later fought in Korea, all of the country would be under a North Korean dictator, wouldn’t it? Instead, South Korea knows democratic governance. Perhaps the test is in determining if the war is “just”?

But this thinking may have led us to become horribly involved in Vietnam. We looked at it as freedom versus the tyranny of communism. However, we overlooked the desire of some Vietnamese to be free of colonialism. Communism may not have been a wise choice, but for many Vietnamese it may have been preferable to being forever governed by a colonial power.

Perhaps the phrase “it’s complicated” is particularly apt. Because of the obvious villainy of the Axis powers of World War II, we have tended to suppose that all conflicts have a clear enemy against which we must righteously battle.

Certainly, Russia’s attempts to overcome Ukraine is perhaps as near as any conflict to an evil power trying to destroy a people who want only the freedom to run their own affairs, who don’t wish a foreign dictator to control their country. In this case, they are asking only for material help, not American soldiers.

But what about conflicts in Gaza and the Middle East? Observers point to wrongdoing on both sides.

We should strive for “a just peace,” but with care that our decisions about wars and granting military assistance do not skirt unwise decisions like the ones that led to our involvement in Vietnam.

We should never think of war as a way to solve a problems. At best, it keeps selfish leaders, usually dictators, at bay until wiser answers can be found.

Unity In a Divided Time

A long time ago my parents were suddenly awakened one Sunday morning by a neighbor’s phone call. “Turn on the radio,” the neighbor pled with my father, apparently herself awakened by bad news.

My parents did, of course, and learned of the attack on U.S. naval forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Though Europe had been at war since 1939, many Americans hoped to stay out of this latest European confrontation. Europeans had been fighting for centuries, many figured, and it needn’t concern us. Now it did. Americans are rightly skittish about committing their young men and women to battlefields, but not when their own country is bombed.

One of the few other times I remember such unity was after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia. Another plane crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers fought a fourth group of hijackers. I watched the newscasts that day on a TV screen at a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia, wondering how we would handle this awful challenge. Whether we correctly handled these attacks in the long run may be open to question, but for a long while, we were definitely united. Americans bought flags and gathered in patriotic groups and supported rescue groups and firefighters in New York City.

But how do we react to wrongs when they involve few of our own citizens, like the attacks in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine?

How do we remain united in working out these and other problems when we have such vastly different opinions about many issues, like abortion, aid for Israel, and immigrants?

Our country’s government is over 230 years old. We have almost foundered on different ideas, directions, and yes, sins, more than once, but we are still here. If we can learn one thing, it’s that we can continue only as we respect differences and continue to work together. We need each other, because none of us has all the answers.

Remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) and World War II: A Tale of Mercy

 

Visiting a relative’s grave site in a Nashville cemetery, my brother pointed out a nearby grave for a neighbor of our family. He told me a story pulled from our family’s history. Our relative, call him Odis, too old to fight, sold insurance during World War II.

As is common, friends and family depended on him for their insurance needs. The neighbor, call him Edward, had insured his house with Odis before he left to serve with U.S. forces, part of an air crew that made regular bombing runs over Europe. His wife lived in the house, hoping for her husband’s return, whenever that might be.

One day Odis noticed that Edward’s policy was due for another payment. “Don’t send out the notice to his wife,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can. Her husband’s plane was shot down over Europe, and he’s reported as missing in action.”

I waited for my brother to recite the rest of the story, for surely there was more. Yes, the plane had been hit by enemy fire. The crew bailed out. Edward, the last one, discovered that his parachute was defective. He jumped, resorting to his emergency chute. It deployed, almost knocking him out with its force. He revived to see a German fighter plane with his sights on him. For whatever reason, Edward never knew why, the German pilot did not fire on him but buzzed past. I like to think the pilot chose to show mercy.

Edward landed in a field, where resistance fighters picked him up before the Germans could find him. They got him out through enemy lines, his final rescue being by boat, and he returned to America.

A few weeks after the report that he was missing in action, Edward walked into Odis’ office and paid his insurance bill.

His grave and that of his wife, dates of death sometime in the 1980’s, rest within sight of the graves of Odis and his wife.