Pearl Harbor: A Generation Defined

September 11, 2001. A day none of us will forget. It was, and is the defining moment of an era. Seventy-one years ago today, another defining moment took place. December 7, 1941. The day Franklin D. Roosevelt termed "a day which will live in infamy." The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Many generations have been born since the events of that day occurred. The passage of time makes it easy to forget just how horrific that day was. On one beautiful morning in Hawaii, 2402 Americans were killed and 1282 were wounded. Four battleships were sunk, including the Arizona, where 1177 men died, many still entombed at the bottom of the harbor.

After 9/11, we started to think of the world in before and after terms. The same was true with the Pearl Harbor attack. Before, the US stood on the sidelines, after...we were at war. Men, boys really, enlisted immediately. My father was one of them. Seventy-one years later so many of that generation of men have been lost, my father is one of them too.

On this anniversary, take a minute to remember those lost on this day, and the thousands who would be lost in the next several years after.

War is hell, and it began seventy-one years ago today.

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