Bookworm Room

Tweet The generation that experienced the attack on Pearl Harbor is fading away, which makes it all the more important that we remember Pearl Harbor.  Regular readers know that we’ve always taken the attack on Pearl Harbor very seriously in my family, because it marked the beginning of Japan’s assault against the entire Pacific region.  [...]

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Tweet Back in 2004, entirely coincidentally, I ended up at the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C., on the same morning that veterans of the Battle of the Bulge had gathered for a reunion. Some got there under their own steam. Many, though, were on walkers or in wheelchairs. They were so frail. And so many [...]

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Tweet Last night, I went to the Annual Pearl Harbor Memorial Dinner hosted by the San Francisco Commandery of the Naval Order of the United States.  It was, as I knew it would be, a significantly smaller event than the annual Midway Commemoration dinner.  That’s reasonable, because the latter celebrates a stunning victory, while the [...]

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Tweet My mother’s heading to the hospital again today.  She’s not aging gracefully, in large part because of the damage done to her body and soul during WWII.  I thought that this would be a good day for me to reprint what I once wrote about her war (originally part of this longer post about [...]

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Tweet One of the most emotionally charged experiences I’ve ever had was standing in the Hawaiian sunlight, watching drop after drop of oil rise up from the USS Arizona. The past was not past — it was there, in front of me, in the water, still moving. Let’s remember today those who died on December [...]

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Tweet I hadn’t heard this song before, but it’s from a time when America identified her enemy and heartened her warriors. Here’s the more familiar “Remember Pearl Harbor” song:

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