Pearl Harbor and 9/11

Pearl Harbor and 9/11

Pearl Harbor and 9/11

Introduction

In the days after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center construction, assessments to Pearl Harbor were often made. Both attacks produced in a essence of American unity. Awidespread foe was identified. Anationwide government galvanized American powers to battle and decimate the forces that assaulted the homeland. How true are assessments of these events? In numerous ways, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 comprised enormously different events that influenced Americans in dissimilar ways. On December 7, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor, which slain over 2,400 U.S. Marines, and drew a parallel between this attack in 1941 and the September 11, 2001 strike on New York City, saying that in both situations, the U.S.A. did not ask for conflict, but was first provoked by a foreign enemy. It could very well be that Bush was right in more than one way to say that the September 11 attack is “a second Pearl Harbor,” for it would seem that both attacks were allowed to occur to infuriate the Americans and to move the public opinion in favor of an all-out conflict against the enemy. This is a grave accusation, but as Michael Rivero reports it in his website, whatreallyhappened.com, it's the oldest trick in the publication, dating back to Roman times; creating the enemies you need. And annals displays abounding of examples when persons utilised that knack, the most renowned being the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

Discussion

In early 1942, by Presidential boss alignment, Japanese-Americans living primarily on the west coast were taken to internment bivouacs as a security measure following the huge Pearl Harbor raid that temporarily incapacitated the Pacific fleet. As John Toland remarks, a national sense of annoy consumed Americans. According to Toland, news of the attack united Americans: “Strangers on the streets looked at one another with a new awareness.” Toland relates that “on the banks of the Potomac someone cut down one of the cherry trees donated years before by Japan.” A New York Times letter to the editor (December 8, 1941) states that, “the unhoped-for has happened, and we shall unitedly arise to crush the offender; we project no happy ideal save the continuance and preservation for posterity of the American way of life.” Secretary of War Stimson, having been told by President Roosevelt of the December 7th attack by telephone, noted that “a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.” As late as August 1945, after President Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans recalled Pearl Harbor and viewed the new weapon as just retribution for the attack that began the war.

The Japanese surprise strike on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii roused American hatred and galvanized the nation. Discrimination against Asian peoples had long been part of American heritage and communal history. In the last mentioned 19th years, political party stages called ...