It was sixty-five years ago today

[unixronin]

"A day that will live forever in infamy," said Franklin Roosevelt.  The phrase has been used many times since, sometimes for the most trivial and inconsequential things imaginable.  (A character got written out of your favorite soap opera?  Give me a festering BREAK!)

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the Second World War, changing the course of the war and of world history forever.  America built a new, better, stronger fleet, and came to dominate first the Pacific, then much of the world.  Interestingly, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warned the Japanese government that he thought it was a very bad idea.  They went ahead with the plan anyway.

Thus is history shaped.

Comments

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

They woke the sleeping tiger. If they had let the tiger sleep who knows what would have happened.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That was almost exactly what Yamamoto is reputed to have said after Pearl Harbor: "I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant."

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

WWII made America a juggernaut. We'd had all the pieces but never put them together. Pearl Harbor made us notice the world. The world hasn't been the same since.