On September 1, 1939, the world was left stunted when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and started one of the world’s biggest conflicts in human history. As the battles raged on, one of the most famous events that changed the scale of the war would be on December 7, 1941, a day in infamy.
When many people are thinking about Pearl Harbor, they think of it as a Japanese ambush on the US Navy in the state of Hawaii when that’s not the full picture.
“It is important to remember that this was not a US state at the time. Just simply a US naval base located in Hawaii,” Dan Taylor, a Dean at Grandview who used to be a Social Studies teacher said. “You could argue that it was on US soil even though it wasn’t US Property at the time.”
Another common misconception about America’s connection to the war is that, before Pearl Harbor, the US remained neutral instead of immediately joining after the Invasion of Poland in 1939.
“At this point, we were very neutral in that process beyond giving arms and aid to our Allied Nations,” Taylor said. “There was something called the Lend Lease act which gives ammunition, food and support to allied nations (Mostly Great Britain).”
However, the attack on Pearl Harbor stopped the US from being a neutral country and changed the idea of the American people entirely. This became very important not just to the American people, but the whole world because of its positive and negative impacts on the future of the U.S military.
“ It should be remembered because many American lives were lost at the time and it showed the vulnerabilities of our nation’s Navy at that time,” Taylor said. “With so many ships lined up in one area which shifted the way the Navy operated moving forwards”.
While Pearl Harbor is a very important event because of its significance with the war and the American people, other events have a stronger response to US citizens by its stronger connection to younger Americans and how recent the event took place.
“Pearl Harbor was something that was generationally huge. One of the bigger events to attack on US soil would be 9\11,” Taylor said. “I would say that many more Americans today hold more of an outsize weight mainly because of its changes for how we travel and interact at airports as anti-terrorism now affects Americans quite a bit”.
Even if the impact of Pearl Harbor doesn’t resonate as more recent events like 9\11, Grandview Social Studies classes do provide insight on what the attack was and its impact on the US today.
“I think it’s covered in all World and US history classes,” Taylor said. “Coverage in classrooms and content does suffice to a point.”
Topics like Pearl Harbor are being explained in classrooms because major past events can help us reflect on what a person or nation has done wrong.
This can lead us to stop making those same faults and achieve something better for our lives.
“We should always remember and memorize significant events such as that,” Taylor said “It’s one of those things where we think what can we do to avoid those things and how we can move forwards as a superpower in the world in order to promote peace.”
