Four Score

The flag flies in Verona.
11/15/2020 dwm photo

 Who was the last person your remember referring to a score of years, Abraham Lincoln? 

 This is the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  Four-score plus seven was the amount of time that had passed between the start of the U.S.A. and the time when Lincoln recognized the sacrifice of Union soldiers on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 There are precious few survivors remaining from that infamous day and a dwindling number of people who remember the war happening during their lifetime.  

I know a number of those people who remember World War II .

Today, two individuals stands out.  

She was a young lady that Sunday morning in December.  She was in school, her first year of college if I recall correctly, studying in the family kitchen on the island of Oahu.  She told me about going outside early, before 8 o'clock, where she saw Japanese planes passing overhead.  Low enough, she mentioned, to see the pilots.

Until that time, the United States seemed sure they were out of any foreign enemies' reach; not any more.  That false sense of security was a reason the country hadn't taken up arms alongside its allies while providing support in other ways.  After the attack, which killed 2,300 and decimated the inventory of aircraft and ships in the harbor, the United States came together as President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked for and received a declaration of war.  

The U.S. joined the fight.

Read more about it from the Britannica.

Recently I met another resident with an extraordinary story.  She was born to a Japanese couple in the United States.  As she and her sister got older, they were sent to their grandparents in Tokyo to learn more about their culture.  When Tokyo was bombed, the girls were sent to live with their uncle where it was safer... in Hiroshima.  

You know what happened... the resident survived, but her sister was closer to the epicenter when the bomb dropped and died a short time later. 

This woman eventually joined her parents (who spent time in an internment camp during the war) in the United States, married and raised a family.