I don’t personally remember the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on the United States Naval Fleet in Pearl Harbor, but the U.S. involvement in the war after Pearl Harbor formed the world I first came to be aware of in life.
I was a little under 2 years old, in late 1941, when the Pearl Harbor attack took place, and I just don’t remember things that early in my life. But the world I first became aware of was the world at war, a massive, multi-front, all-out war between many of the most advanced nations of the time.
We didn’t have TVs or the Internet to get the news in those days, but the war effort was the big news every day, in the newspapers and on the radio. All of us knew “soldier boys,” as they often were called, joining the Army, Air Force, Navy or Marines from our community. Even though we were at home, or too young to go overseas to fight, the feelingof the times was that “we, the whole people,” are at war. The emphasis was that everyone had a part to play in the war effort, including those who remained on the farms, worked in the factories or cultivated a Victory Garden.
It has been 70 years since the Pearl Harbor attack that brought our country into the war. Prior to that, the U.S. had tried to stay out of the conflict, and our politicians had campaigned on the idea of staying out of overseas conflicts. Pearl Harbor galvanized our citizenry, aroused our country to enter the conflicts with earnestness, determination and without reserve. It was something like the effect of 9/11 on our current generation, only the effect in 1941 seemed wider and deeper in its impact on the American people.
Our more recent conflicts have been waged in a way that kind of insulates many people from the sense of being at war; with life going on without much change from normal, without the present and urgent sense of paying for the war as it is waged, and often without the sense that our own families and friends are involved as a part of the conduct and support of the war effort. Back in the World War II days, everybody was being urged to buy War Bonds, and the sense was promoted that paying your taxes and growing food and other materials was part ofthe patriotic effort to support our country and our troops. Compared to those days, it seems today like we hear more of efforts to get out of paying our taxes to cover the costs of Iraq andAfghanistan which we borrowed from China.
Just this year, I learned that our own Jack Lasater was involved in one of the heaviest and costly battles of the entire WW II, the Battle of the Bulge, near the German border with Holland. In going through some of his belongings years after his passing, his family discovered photos which he had made during his military service, but had never shared. I know that Max Walker was involved in the enormously costly Normandy Invasion; Russell Walker was involved in a tank unit like Jack Lasater.
Our Pea Ridge VFW unit is named Wood-Hall, after members of those Pea Ridge families who lost their lives in the War.
After Sept. 11, 2001, it was said that the attacks on the Trade Towers changed our country forever. I have never had much appreciation for comments on thatorder. Perhaps we supposed in the 1940s that Pearl Harbor changed us forever as well. And, the Civil War certainly changed us forever, too. The supposition is that those events will always be remembered and the lessons learned from them will be lastingly learned, remembered and put into practice. One of my sour assessments of humanity, however, is that we are, as a whole, notoriously forgetful of things like this which happen in our history. None of our wars to end all wars have succeeded in eliminating war. Remembering, as a nation, requires constant reminders, continuing education and ongoing concerted effort. Otherwise, we seem not to learn from ourhistory.
World War II did have outcomes that sometimes turned out positive, albeit unexpected at the time of Pearl Harbor. The war played a part in the development of atomic energy, with all its promise and all its peril. Of course that included the atomic bomb, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The war gave us jet airplanes, radar and much improved radio communications. It also moved us down the road from being a rural, farming country toward an urban and industrialized society, and a mobile society.
All these things influenced our Pea Ridge community.
These days, people don’t stay where they were born, they tend to migrate all over the country during their working lives. That didn’t happen so often in Pea Ridge before the War.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 12/14/2011