Pearl Harbor and 9/11

From the Detroit Free Press:

The morning calm was violently shattered by airplanes that rained down death and destruction.

In their wake came chaos, flames and the steely resolve of a shocked nation never to forget.

Those reminders are just as applicable to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as they are to the Japanese attack on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 68 years ago today.

More than 2,400 Americans died on the date President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy” and drew the United States into World War II. Nearly 3,000 deaths occurred as a result of what President George W. Bush termed “despicable acts of terror.”

While memories of 9/11 are vivid to most Americans, Pearl Harbor veterans, whose numbers continue to dwindle each year, are concerned about their place in history being forgotten.

Vincent Rosati, 89, of Macomb Township was a Navy gunner’s mate aboard the U.S.S. Phoenix, one of several battleships moored on Battleship Row along the southeast shore of Ford Island. A retired Stroh Brewery Co. employee, Rosati said the element of surprise was the most striking similarity between Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

“At Pearl, we should have known better, though,” he said. The war had been raging for more than two years by December 1941. “It seems like every generation has to learn the hard way through bloodshed,” he said.

“The lessons of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are that someone’s always out to get us and we need to be on the alert,” said Francis Rogers, 87, of Westland, a retired donut shop owner who was an Army Air Corps gunner on Oahu that morning.

Nathan Weiser, 93, of Dearborn was an Army Air Corps mechanic and radio operator stationed on Oahu when the attack occurred. A retired owner of an iron and metal business, Weiser said, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about people forgetting about Pearl Harbor.”

Bill Muehleib, national vice president of Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, said approximately 4,600 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack are still alive. Muehleib acknowledged concerns from some veterans that the nation will someday forget, but he said he believes those fears are misplaced.

Wayne State University history professor Mel Sm, 70, said Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were similar in many ways. The big difference was in how the nation learned about them.

“With Pearl Harbor, it took a while for the news and pictures to reach us.” either through radio or newspapers, but with 9/11, we watched the collapse of the towers firsthand and, as a result, it appeared more shocking than Pearl Harbor.”

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