Each year on this “Day of Infamy” I get out my mother’s scrapbook and look through it, filled with the mementos of her time in Hawaii before and immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor during which she was nearly killed by a shell exploding in her kitchen. The photos of young people with all their hopes and dreams, some of them, the men in sailor uniforms, taken in the bars and around various parts of the islands showed the before and after of the attack. A couple of the photos show my mother and a girlfriend in their gas masks standing next to impromptu and hurriedly built bomb shelters, a sharp contrast to the beautiful lives they were enjoying before the attack.

Much of the material in mom’s scrapbook is vindication of Norman Rockwell’s America, the personal items such as love letters and so much more evidencing the hopes and dreams of a beautiful young woman who had every reason to believe life would be beautiful until those bombs began to fall and explode, and so many young people were being killed for no reason any of them knew.

In “Gone With The Wind,” Ashley was incorrect in commenting after the wars were over people forgot why they were fought. In reality, while it is too often true that liars make history what they want it to be, that as per Henry Ford much of history is “bunk,” and winners not losers write the histories of wars, nevertheless people do remember why they were fought. That is, those who lived to tell the story. But those who live to tell the story are most often shouted down by those coming after the fact with their own agendas of revisionist histories.

Yes, many of our leaders did lie to us before, during, and after WWII to serve their own evil purposes. But the reality of it all is found in my mother’s scrapbook, the kind of reality that led to Manzinar, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

The decisions made by those in power leading to WWII were based for the most part on the same things leading to most wars; egos, greed, corruption, the most base of human traits that put too many leaders with these base traits in power. And these most base of human traits continue as they ever have, continuing to put too many leaders in power that have achieved their imminence through ego, greed, and corruption.

These many years later, I never think of “Remember Pearl Harbor” that I do not also think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, there was a need for Manzinar, there was a need to drop those atomic bombs thereby shortening the war and saving millions of American and Japanese lives by doing so; and only fools would believe Hitler or Tojo would not have done so. That we had the bomb first decided the issue.

But the nightmare that continues for me is the thought of those enormous blasts that snuffed out the lives of so many thousands of Japanese including so many babies and children, innocent civilians that had no idea of why their lives were being snuffed out any more than my mother and so many young people knew why those bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor.

Those my age recall when we trusted our leadership, some of us are blessed to recall Norman Rockwell’s America, and we have every reason to understand why our present leaders are not to be trusted. But we have no more reason to trust the leaders of other nations than our own. The ongoing tragedy of our species is that the majority of decent people would choose to live in peace if only they had leaders of the same mind.

However, neither Pearl Harbor nor 9/11 are aberrations, over the course of human history they have proven to be the rule rather than the exception. And as I leaf through mom’s scrapbook I realize this won’t change until the leaders of nations are held to account for the evil they do. And I also ask myself, will Bush and his enablers, will any of those presently contending for the White House ever be held accountable for the evil they have done? Is this really the best We the People have to look forward to, more betrayal of the hopes and dreams of a beautiful young woman who was my mother?