Today is Pearl Harbor Day and, yes, we remembered without a reminder. I’m 62, too young (cough, cough) to remember what I was doing when the news came. Young people don’t realize it, but people my age grew up hearing people of our parent’s age remark on what they were doing when they heard about Pearl Harbor. I heard so many stories that sometimes I think I can remember myself, odd as it seems. Perhaps that is because I am so familiar with the places where my mother and father lived in 1941.

A lot of young men – boys – died on a lot of Pacific Islands; quite a few were taken at Pearl Harbor itself, never to know what was going on. I think of the men who rest in the Arizona and those who perished waiting inside overturned and sunken warships in the harbor for help that could not come.

I myself own many Japanese products and sometimes I wonder about it; but the Japanese have always had a different culture. They are, well, focused and it leads to quality products. Many Americans died because that focus was turned to a different goal than precision measurements.

I think we owe the men who died gutshot on islands because it would make them scream and draw into fire buddies who couldn’t stand to hear them suffer. Remember the men who died on The Bataan Death March. Remember that vivisection was practiced on POW’s. I don’t think we should forget the mentality and philosophy that lay behind those practices and beliefs, and for the sake of those who dealt with it once and sacrificed, I think we should strive to be alert.

We need to be alert to ourselves as well – to return to a pride in workmanship and not just a “can do with derring-do” attitude, not to mention the American dream of personal fortune. We do not want to worship this country above all else, but we need to respect it and conduct ourselves with a sense of accountability and not entitlement.

So, are there steps to get me down from this soapbox?