Kickass Remembers Pearl Harbor by Bill Stokes

Attribution: U.S. Navy, Office of Public Relations, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that 82 years ago when remembering was an official national necessity as commanded by the ubiquitous “Remember Pearl Harbor” signs everywhere, the keeper was among those actually old enough to remember and vividly recalls the very day—Dec. 7, 1941, “a day that will live in infamy” as describe by FDR.

The order to remember the sneak attack that killed 2,390 servicemen and civilians was of course part of the government’s campaign to generate enthusiasm for going to war.

And to say that that campaign worked would be a gross understatement: The military-industrial complex embraced a revenge-bent populace to create the greatest war machine in history and WWII resulted in an estimated 40 to 80 million deaths, most of them woman and children.

Those in the keeper’s age group cherish their personal war memories and how they effected their lives with such thing as a shortage of bicycles and absence of Hershey bars.

And then there was the sobbing neighbor lady embraced by the keeper’s mother on the day the awful telegram was delivered. The keeper remembers that too.