Differences

 

 

One of the advantages of growing old, and there are not so many that one is likely to lose track of them, is that you can see first hand the different ways in which society reacts to similar events and ponder why they do so. I was fourteen years old when the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor occurred so I did not actually witness it but I heard the very first announcement on the radio that Sunday morning and I followed subsequent events very closely. First let me say that I am deeply gratified and proud of the flood of patriotism and loyalty to the United States that the attack on the WTC engendered. It restored my faith in the youth and early middle-aged of America. Flags sprouted everywhere. The President's bellicose speech was warmly applauded and well received by the public. The entire mood of the U.S. public with respect to international relations changed. All of that was so very much like the aftermath of Pearl Harbor that it was almost like deja vu. But as the days went on after that event I began to sense a few differences; few but definite. I want to list some of those differences and see if I can explain them without putting a value judgment on them. I am not saying that what we experienced in 1941 was more right or more valid or more patriotic, nor am I saying it was smarter. I am just saying that it was different.

Hatred of the perpetrator. I don't mean dislike or distrust or failure to understand, I mean hatred. On December 8, 1941 every one I knew absolutely hated the Japanese people. The term "Japanese" instantly and universally became "Jap", pronounced with all the loathing we could muster. There was no TV or liberal press to ameliorate our loathing with softer politically correct speech. A foreign entity had just attacked without warning our sailors and soldiers in Hawaii (there weren't large numbers of civilian casualties at Pearl Harbor) and they had earned our hatred forever. Since that time we have had a steady diet of pleas for diversity, for ethnic sensitivity, for racial understanding. It has been taught to our children as eternal truth. There are still a few people my age and older who have not entirely recovered from that hatred of the Japanese who earned it with some unspeakable cruelties in addition to Pearl Harbor. Now I don't see that hate for the Moslem fundamentalists who perpetrated WTC. I see a condemnation of it, but not a hatred. Maybe that is best.

Subjectivity of service and participation. Almost the only subject other than the war news was "What can I do to help in the war." On Monday morning after Pearl Harbor there were block long lines of men at the recruiting offices trying to join the service. No sacrifice was too great at any time in the war. We saved all the cooking fat, lead or tin foil, razor blades, peach seeds (they were used in gas mask production I'm told). I failed solid geometry in high school and had to retake it because I was too busy gathering scrap metal to pile up on the schoolyard. Butter, tires, meat, shoes, gasoline, oil, were all rationed but not so severely that they hurt and no one complained. Airline seats were reserved for service men only without a special permit. Now it seems that there is not that sense of personal desire to be involved in the war. We are told that airline patrons are "patient" and this only a few months after they were declared "aggressive". Maybe this lack of personal involvement in this "war" is because we are not sure that it is a war. But there is a difference.

My country right or wrong. That was a popular and frequent opinion in 1942 and the other years of the war. Woe betide the person who criticized our leaders' actions or decisions. It wasn't the government who stopped the criticism it was the people, the citizenry who would not tolerate it. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not only our President he was our moral, spiritual and emotional leader and our "father figure" as well. Since that time we have lost our innocence about members of government. A probing, untiring, scandal seeking media would not hesitate at this time to break a sexual indiscretion, a mental infirmity, or a moral insufficiency on the part of George W. Bush. Well they did hesitate in the 1940s. I was fifty years old before I knew that FDR kept a mistress in the White House and close to that age before I came to the conclusion that he had prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. And I wished then that I had not come to those conclusions.

All military men were heroes. To not be in uniform and be under fifty was to be under a cloud of suspicion during World War II. The word "slacker" carried over from WW I was still in common use. We respected our soldiers and sailors. I finally got in the Navy just before the war was over and when stationed in Chicago enjoyed free drinks, free meals, free bus rides, and all the female company any fat, ugly boy could want. People would just come up to you on the street and offer to take you home for a meal or to a bar for drinks. For some reason that adoration of the military man is not there now. Jane Fonda did her work well...and I do not speak of her acting. To select a military career is not "politically correct". Or was it Lt. Calley and what he did that turned the U.S. off on service men? Whatever it was I hope it goes away while I'm still here, because it is not justified.

The Sixties. When the WTC patriotism surge came I thought "we have at last shaken off the Sixties" and by that I meant the beatniks and draft dodgers and dissolute "flower children" who went to college in the 1960s and raised so much hell and contributed so much to the drug culture of the U.S. The student body of Yale University published a manifesto to the effect that it was "time for this generation to take their time at serving their country and saving its values" (as best I remember it). Good stuff! Then I found the "Sixties Generation" again. They are professors now. The Librarian at the College in Florida who wouldn't admit students wearing ribbons that said "I'm proud to be an American" because it might hurt a foreign student's feelings, the American History prof at University of New Mexico who said something like "Anyone who can bomb the Pentagon gets my vote". The Yale University faculty forum, which urged that no action be taken against the perpetrators until the "root causes" of their social maladjustment was determined. The North Carolina faculty forum resolution which suggested that the U.S. was really to blame for the WTC disaster. The Sixties generation are now college professors.

I had better stop listing differences, because even though I promised not to put a value judgment on these differences, I fear that you might detect that I feel one. One of the bad things about getting old (and it is better than the alternative) is that you think you are always right.