EBOOK
About
Eighty years have passed since Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and only a few survivors are left to recall that shocking day. Even after they are gone, however, the memory will remain. "Remember Pearl Harbor" is branded on the collective American consciousness. This is true for many reasons. Pearl Harbor is America's preeminent symbol of innocence and victimization, coupled with "righteous fury," as Henry Luce called it in the essay that opens this volume. Japan's attack propelled the United States out of isolationism. It triggered the country's emergence as a great power in the most devastating war of modern times, a global conflict against Nazism, fascism, and Japanese aggression that ended in thoroughgoing victory. And World War II, in turn, set the stage for American eminence in the postwar world that followed, right up to the present day.