United States Archives -

A Day That Will Live In Infamy Plus 77 Years

Today marks the 77th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is also marks the first time that a surviving member of the crew of the USS Arizona will not be in Hawaii to commemorate the event.

From the news reports:

No one who survived the bombing of the USS Arizona battleship will be in the audience.

“This is the very first year,” said Daniel Martinez, historian with the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument.

Health issues and doctor’s orders prevented Lou Conter from coming.

“She said you cannot go. You better cancel out,” he said in telephone interview from his home in California.

Conter is 97. The handful of survivors of the battleship’s sinking are all in their 90s…

About 300 USS Arizona sailors survived Japan’s surprise attack.

Only five are alive: Conter, Don Stratton, Ken Potts, Lonnie Cook and Lauren Bruner.

The hatred and enmity between the two countries is in the past. Now you have survivors who fought on each side coming together in ceremonies like the Blacked Canteen ceremony which celebrates peace and reconciliation.

It Only Makes Sense To Me

Today is Independence Day and Tuesday, July 1st was Canada Day or, as I still call it, Dominion Day. The former celebrates our birth as a nation and the latter celebrates the British North America Act of 1867 which united the provinces of Canada (Ontario and Quebec), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia into the Dominion of Canada within the British Empire.

Roberta X makes the very sensible suggestion of celebrating the days between July 2nd and 3rd, as Co-Dependence Days.

I’ll be excoriated for this, but the inhabitants of U.S. and Canada ought to celebrate July 2 and 3, the days between Canada Day and Independence Day, as “Co-dependence Days,” in which we consider all that we love and loathe about our neighbor. We share the longest border in the world without armies watching one another over it, about 2/3 of a common language and all manner of customs, habits and entertainments — and we share them about the same way fraternal twins between the ages of seven and twelve share the back seat of car over the course of a day-long excursion.

I’ve always liked Canada and Canadians. The country has a spectacular beauty in many places. As to the Canadian people, they are a likeable people with perhaps the sometimes exception of the Francophones in La Belle Province. Perhaps I hold a rosier view of Canadians as my first girlfriend was Canadian.

Still, I could see this joint holiday working.