They died, most of them, not knowing what hit them.

Below decks on the USS Arizona there was chaos, panic, heroism, cowardice…all the things one would expect less than 15 minutes after the unprovoked attack by the Japanese began on December 7, 1941. And then…an unlucky hit on the main powder magazine and in a flash, the Arizona was lifted 20 feet out of the water and crashed back into the harbor belching huge columns of black smoke and fire.

Most of the almost 1200 souls trapped below decks died instantly. Some few—the unlucky ones—did not. Although not made public at the time, it was thought that as many as 2 dozen live sailors were hopelessly trapped as the huge battleship sank and began to fill with water. For as long as 10 days, desperate rescuers could hear the tapping of trapped crew members as they tried to work their way with blowtorches through the massive ship’s superstructure.

Finally the tapping stopped.

We’ve never really learned the “lesson” of Pearl Harbor. Nine years later, without warning or provocation, the North Koreans invaded the South with the active participation and assistance of both China and the Soviet Union. By the time we were able to meaningfully respond, our troops were bottled up in a small pocket on the southern end of the Korean peninsula. It took a massive effort on the part of the American army to evict the North Koreans…and nearly 32,000 casualties.

September 11, 2001 was our generation’s “Pearl Harbor.” But was it really? I’d argue that 9/11 was much more of a bolt out of the blue. The world was at war in 1941 while 60 years later, there were no comparable conflicts. Certainly, we were arrogant and overconfident that horrible day while our fathers and grandfathers were more uncertain of the future given our unpreparedness for war. I suppose the big difference was an underlying belief in the basic goodness of America on the part of our parents while a large segment of the American population today does not see the US in a similar light.

In fact, those who pass for liberals today by and large believe that the United States is evil, that our history is a sham, that our culture is corrupt, that our myths are worthless, our legends false, and the very ideals that propelled America from a small, coastal country of 13 radically different colonies into a continental hyperpower are a lie.

God help us if these people ever get in power.

The Commissar has some excellent links to Pearl Harbor sites here as well as an affecting post here on a survivor of the USS Oklahoma, another doomed ship from that tragic day.