Ann Green sat in her apartment on Eighth Street near downtown Columbus adjusting her radio dial a little this way and a little that way, “fishing around for that program whereon canaries chirp to organ music.”
The day was cold with cloudy skies — down in the 20s overnight Saturday and only struggling into the low 30s by that Sunday afternoon.
Downtown stores and restaurants were closed, as usual. So, as on many lazy Sunday afternoons, Ann searched the glowing dial in the corner of her living room for that crazy radio show with the organ and the birds to provide background music while she knitted a sweater.
Right at 2:30, just when she thought she might have found the station through the whistles and hisses, a man’s voice broke through. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air.” The date was December 7, 1941 — 77 years ago this weekend.
Ann was the 45-year-old Society Editor of “The Evening Republican” (now “The Republic”). She had joined the newspaper staff shortly after the death of her husband in 1939 and would one day become a community icon via her daily column, “Entirely Personal.” In 1941, however, the newspaper bestowed few by-lines and even fewer personal columns.
So, on December 8 (the newspaper had no Sunday issue) in the midst of screaming headlines and stories of war from around the world and local editorial comments by her boss, Editor Mel Lostutter, Ann wrote just a few paragraphs under the byline “The Observer.”
“We can scarcely believe we are actually at war,” Ann wrote, “that our country has suffered the same tactics used by the Axis on other countries. No doubt we are in for a lot of heartaches, losses and disappointments, but we will see this thing through, and in the end, the Japanese may prove the scourge that will make a better nation of us.”
Like nearly every other American that day, Ann was overcome by the shock of Pearl Harbor and was overwhelmed with anxiety as she contemplated the horror that was certain to lie ahead. Her words were a young journalist’s attempt to put a courageous spin on an unimaginable reality — a reality that would, over the next four years, claim more than 400,000 American soldiers and more than 50 million soldiers and civilians from other nations around the world.
I was born in 1945 and grew up in a time when the Second World War was not ancient history — when the physical and emotional wounds of those horrible days were still open and festering in families here and around the world. Every December 7 our nation paused to “Remember Pearl Harbor.”
Some remembered it in reverence for all the lives lost in the senseless cruelty of war. Some, unfortunately, remembered it in lingering hatred for the people of Japan, who were led into atrocities and self-destruction by dictatorial leaders preaching extreme nationalism, isolationism and divine right.
Eventually, as Japan entered the international community of representative democracies, and economic ties with the United States grew, most of us quit commemorating December 7 — preferring to look to the present and the future, rather than rehashing the dark past.
I understand those sentiments. Yet, I think Pearl Harbor needs to be always a place and a time and a tragedy remembered and contemplated by both the people of the United States and the people of Japan.
As Americans, we need to remember and honor the 2,335 sailors and soldiers and the 68 civilians killed on that day defending our nation. We also need to remember the lessons history teaches about the political processes that led the Japanese — as well as the Germans and the Italians — down a dark path into dictatorship, international isolation, extreme nationalism, racial/ethnic arrogance and violent bigotry.
No nation is immune from such manipulated hatred and unholy self-interest. By remembering and understanding the tragic events of our past, we take a step toward safeguarding our future.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com.
