75 years ago today December 7th became the date that would live in infamy. On that Sunday morning in 1941, the United States Navy Base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Empire of Japan. 2,403 Americans were killed, pulling American into the world war that was already raging in Europe and Asia. That war changed the world. It made the United States into a super power. It also had profound effects on my family.
The USS West Virginia burns next to the USS Tennessee at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Very few things that a president can or will do will directly affect our lives. One of the great exceptions is the decision to go to war. And with the Declarations of War first against Japan, then against Germany and Italy, America entered World War II, as did both of my grandfathers.
My dad’s dad, Herbert Floyd was living in Indiana when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was 47 years old and a veteran of the Great War which we today know as World War I. Grandpa Floyd went into the Navy and was sent to fight the Japanese in the Pacific.
My grandfather, Herbert Floyd, serving in World War II in the U.S. Navy.
In 1942, while tending to wounded Marines in the Makin Islands, my grandfather was taken down by a Japanese machine gun. Never expected to walk again, Grandpa Floyd was sent stateside to the Long Beach Navel Hospital. My grandmother packed up everything and their six children and came to Long Beach, California. Grandpa Floyd recovered, gained the strength to walk again, and settled down with his family in Southern California.
My mom’s dad, John Snyder of Chicago, found himself in the United States Army. He was sent to Europe and participated in the Italian campaign. He saw the body of the Benito Mussolini publicly displayed after his execution.
Mussolini’s body is publicly displayed (second from the left) alongside his mistress and other executed fascists in April 1945.
After the Italian Campaign, Grandpa Snyder was sent to the Pacific Theater. Following the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Grandpa Snyder was part of the U.S. Occupation Force in Japan and even present in Hiroshima. Upon his return he’d suffer from debilitating arthritis possibly caused by exposure to radiation. For the warmer climate, he too would move his family to Southern California.
My grandfather, John Snyder, out front of Hiroshima City Hall after the atomic bomb was dropped and the surrender of Japan.
Very few will ever make the decisions that shape history, but some might play a small part in the events that decide the outcome of events. Those who fought for the cause of Independence in the Revolutionary War, for the Union in the Civil War, and for the Allied Nations in World War II contributed more than many of us could ever repay. Had the outcome of any of those wars gone differently, the United States wouldn’t be recognizable to us here today, if it existed as a single unified country at all.
As the late historian Stephen Ambrose wrote when picking the American solider – GI Joe – as the Person of the 20th Century:
America had sent her young men and women halfway around the world in both directions not to conquer, but to liberate. And they did – not only the occupied countries but Germany and Japan as well. It was one of the greatest moments, not only in American history but in all of human history.
I am grateful to both of my grandfathers and to those of their generation which we often call “the greatest generation” for their service. What they did made a profound difference in the course of human events. Even as the clouds of war were gathering, I doubt that on Saturday, December 6, 1941 they knew how profoundly their lives and the world would change the very next morning.
