Today is the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This 'day of infamy' as President Franklin Roosevelt called it at the time, was a turning point in the lives of the millions of Americans who lived through it and the history of our nation.
I am a history buff, and my favorite period of history is that of the Great Depression leading into World War II. Growing up, I watched every movie about the war from "Guadalcanal Diary" with Willaim Bendix and "Sands of Iwo Jima" with John Wayne, to more recent epics like the Spielberg and Hanks' "Saving Private Ryan" and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of our Fathers”.
My first taste of non-fiction about World War II was the NBC Series "Victory at Sea.” Thanks to YouTube, I was able to look at one of my favorite episodes of the series, one dealing with the fighting on the island of Guadalcanal, and the numerous naval battles in the waters around the island. The Americans who fought this battle and countless others around the world are true heroes. They left their homes, their families, and traveled halfway around the world where they fought under some horrific conditions for our way of life. Many never came back, and many were changed forever. We owe these people our eternal gratitude.
But these heroes couldn't have fought and won a war on two fronts on such a massive scale without the bullets, tanks, bombers and supplies of every type that overwhelmed the Axis Powers. And perhaps nothing tells this part of the story better than what I like to call a music video contained in this episode. The music is by famed composer Richard Rogers called the Guadalcanal Victory March.
Narrator Leonard Graves reads, “…far from the sailors and marines who fight and pray for victory and salvation, the United States of America organizes her land, her resources, her industry, her men to answer the distant prayers. And in the greatest mobilization of strength ever known to the world, America prepares to rescue the world. And to the rescue America marches:” Cue the orchestra. What follows is several minutes of inspiring music and to me some of the most magnificent film of the war: we watch as raw material, crops, steel, oil, and draftees are transformed into rifles, ships, tanks, trucks, bombs, planes, medical supplies, c-rations, and highly trained combat troops.
We were truly blessed. We had the great good fortune of having a generation of Americans who did their duty, and truly did rescue the world. And we had the natural resources, technology, mass production capabilities and skilled work force that sent American battleships into Tokyo Bay and the iconic “jeep” cruising down the Auotbahn.
Sadly, each day we are losing more and more of our World War II vets, as their time on this earth slips away. So too, are we loosing the means of production that helped those GI’s rescue the world. What do you think?
To see the video in full, go to this link, and scroll down to Part 3. It begins about 2 minutes and 20 seconds in.
