MUSINGS

 

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I lost the TV/flat screen remote tonight. The screen just kept playing random Youtube videos by this bogan Aussie guy who calls his viewers “doggies” and who camps out on islands in Indonesia to make do with what he catches, finds etc. I couldn’t turn it off or turn down the volume because I didn’t have the remote.

Kate and I looked for it using the torches in our phones and finally gave up, at which point I accidentally found it behind the table where it had fallen.

As often said about health and loved ones, ot only do you not value something until you lose it, it also shows how dependent we have become upon the devices in our lives: mobile phones, computers, internet, Youtube . . .

I read somewhere once that the feeling of withdrawal and negative effects of cell phone deprivation is now a recognised mental health disorder.

Having been without my phone at times, I believe it.

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Yesterday our time and today US time is the anniversary of the attack upon Pearl Harbour in 1941.

It happened at 7.48am Hawaiian time. The US was a neutral country at that time in the war, Japan’s surprise attack was intended to prevent the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia. Over the course of seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the US-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Military personnel killed that day totalled 2,335. Additionally, 68 civilians were killed.

I was thinking about that as we plan for Christmas.

People at Pearl Harbour were no doubt also planning family Christmas get togethers, putting up their decorations, sending cards, buying presents, much as we are at the present time. People in the US were doing likewise.  At 7.48am on Sunday morning, Imperial Japanese aircraft (including fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers, attacked.

Compare with 9/11 where we were shocked that terrorists attacked their hated foe, causing 2,977 non-hijack fatalities.  That was not a country attacking another country.

How much more horrific when a combatant super power attacks a neutral power in a surprise attack, without formal warning (required by part III of the Hague Convention of 1907) and whilst peace negotiations were ongoing.

In the film Tora! Tora! Tora!, the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto says “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” There is debate as to whether or not he said (or wrote) those words but they are accurate.

The next day in his address to Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy" and Congress declaried war on Japan.

17 days out from Christmas Day 1941, the US was at war. Men and women became part of the war effort.

Victory over Japan Day (also known as V-J Day, and Victory in the Pacific Day) happened on 15 August 1945 with Japan’s surrender after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

VE (Victory in Europe) Day) had been declared on 8 May 1945 with Germany’s surrender.

Because the Pearl Harbour attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack was later judged in the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.

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Just some thoughts  . . .