Remembering September 11th

[ryhoyarbie]

I was in college going to my 9:30 class in the morning, my second class, and the teacher came into the room and said the World Trade Towers have been hit. I was like "okay" not really thinking what that ment. Then I went home, turned on the television, and watched the footage of the planes crashing into the towers.

*On a side note, with all this "remember September 11th" stuff, does anybody else talk about remember Pearl Harbor, or remember "D-day" of WW2, etc. I don't think those things get talked about like the September 11th attacks. I guess because it's more recent.

ryan

 

[Beebers]

*On a side note, with all this "remember September 11th" stuff, does anybody else talk about remember Pearl Harbor, or remember "D-day" of WW2, etc. I don't think those things get talked about like the September 11th attacks. I guess because it's more recent.

That's a great question.
All of my older relatives, and their contemporaries, and my parents and grandparents were involved in those times either through actual service in the war or through Stateside war support efforts. The great distinction between Pearl Harbor and 9/11, while they were both sneak attacks, is that Pearl Harbor was a military strike on a military installation, while 9/11 was a faction attack on civilians (with the obvious exception of the Pentagon), using civilian means (commercial airliners). President Roosevelt (a Democrat, btw, for anyone who has interest in such things lol) swung immediately into war and the country was entirely taken up with that quite quickly. It bears noting that Roosevelt encountered his own share of opposition to his decision to go to war. The U.S. was in 1941 still crawling out from under the economic devastation of the Great Depression. We didn't have a whole lot with which to fight. Our Air Force equipment was PITIFUL in both quality and quantity, just as one example. All the many people I knew who experienced those times always enjoyed telling us their stories of life Stateside through those years - everything went to the war effort - gasoline rationing - assuming you were lucky enough to HAVE a car you were assigned a sticker for your windshield according to how much gas you could get - families could get X amount, farmers were allowed a bit more, and so on. People combined all their errands in one trip to conserve gas, shared rides, and didn't run around constantly in the car the way we do now. Kids would go around with their wagons gathering every bit and scrap of metal they could find to send to be melted down for the war effort, and it was indeed all put to use. Women left the home to go to work in unprecendented numbers because the men were overseas. Everyone who could grew Victory Gardens even if they only had a tiny patch of yard or containers to grow it in, because fresh food was not plentiful. My family ran their own dairy farm and bottled their own milk, and throughout both the Depression and WWII they made sure the local poor or struggling families had fresh milk every day delivered to their doorsteps, whether or not they could pay for it (usually not.) Women at home rolled bandages and sent care packages, often made up of home-made treats, overseas to "our boys". I was very, very lucky to have grown up surrounded by such people and their stories. They were unshakable in their belief that we had to not just get through but to prevail. There was a sense of shared experience and shared purpose. But, as is typical, anyone in actual service did not discuss their war experience or Pearl Harbor. This is standard for veterans of any conflict. Unless one gets very, very close to them, as I've been fortunate enough to do, they don't talk about it. So, Stateside life stories were talked about freely by everyone, Pearl Harbor and D-Day et al were not, too painful. The finest book one can read about personal accounts of it by both veterans and those who remained here is Studs Terkel's "The Good War", which I highly recommend to everyone. It is wonderful and amazing reading.

 

[Whatever]

My great uncle Ralph was at Pearl Harbor, Normandy, and many other major battles in WWII. He died after my birth, but before I could remember him.

 

[ryhoyarbie]

I actually did a paper On World War II a few years ago in a college class and actually find out that Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor was going to get attacked at least earlier in 1941. It was the only way that the United States would actually be in the war because offically, the United States doesn't declare war on another country first. This is similar to the government knowing about an attack on America from Bin Laden, but this time the government didn't want it to happen, only Roosevelt wanted an attack by the Japs to happen.

ryan

 

[Beebers]

The seeds of and the run-up to the Second World War were not quite that simple. It's an enormous, enormous subject which scholars spend their entire careers studying and understanding. The seeds were in fact sown before and during the First World War and within that conflict's aftermath. It is an extremely complex subject of study. Indeed, many of the current problems in the Middle East have their immediate roots in the aftermaths of both conflicts.

 

[Beebers]

My great uncle Ralph was at Pearl Harbor, Normandy, and many other major battles in WWII. He died after my birth, but before I could remember him.

Bless his soul.

 

[Beebers]

I actually did a paper On World War II a few years ago in a college class and actually find out that Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor was going to get attacked at least earlier in 1941. It was the only way that the United States would actually be in the war because offically, the United States doesn't declare war on another country first. This is similar to the government knowing about an attack on America from Bin Laden, but this time the government didn't want it to happen, only Roosevelt wanted an attack by the Japs to happen.

ryan

The above post is disturbing me more and more, because impressionable young people will read this and may take it as gospel. You were in fact, ryoharbie, present in both Administrations cited, you were there and therefore know unshakably and can summarize in one foolish and uneducated paragraph the chain of events of over a century? You personally associated with Franklin Roosevelt and can therefore speak with absolute authority about what was in his mind? Get thee to some books, and educate yourselves. Broaden your minds and learn. TALK to people to whom real events actually happened. What we now call "chatter" has had its equivalents since the invention of electricity. We had so much intelligence leading up to Pearl Harbor involving places all over the world and here that you couldn't possibly defend against it all. The post totally ignores Europe, years of pressure on us to get into the war before we did, the fact that we were an economically hobbled country, appeasement (look it up), Jewish persecution, pogroms (look them UP for God's sake), oh, man, so much humanity and history and so many cultures, this was NOT ABOUT AMERICA ALONE, Good God people, please learn your history.

 

[ryhoyarbie]

The books I read and quoted from did have several people from the Roosevelt administration that worked closely with Roosevelt saying that he wanted Japan to attack. These were very old books that were printed from the 50's and 60's I read.

I also know the second World War wasn't about America and neither was the first. Actually I never did say anything on what you posted, only about Roosevelt knowing that Japan would attack America. I already know a lot about World War 1 and 2 because of the multiple books I read that gave information about Europe, especially Germany and the problems that esculated after World War. No I wasn't there, but the books that I read do give me information on what happened during the early part of the 20th century. I'm also currently in a German history class that goes from after World War 1 and am currently reading 3 books that talk about the problems that Europe, more specifically Germany had after the first war. I'm also a history major and a senior who graduates this May and who plans to go to grad school hopefully in the fall and might go and get a doctorate.

ryan

 

[Super Scooter]

The above post is disturbing me more and more, because impressionable young people will read this and may take it as gospel. You were in fact, ryoharbie, present in both Administrations cited, you were there and therefore know unshakably and can summarize in one foolish and uneducated paragraph the chain of events of over a century? You personally associated with Franklin Roosevelt and can therefore speak with absolute authority about what was in his mind? Get thee to some books, and educate yourselves. Broaden your minds and learn. TALK to people to whom real events actually happened. What we now call "chatter" has had its equivalents since the invention of electricity. We had so much intelligence leading up to Pearl Harbor involving places all over the world and here that you couldn't possibly defend against it all. The post totally ignores Europe, years of pressure on us to get into the war before we did, the fact that we were an economically hobbled country, appeasement (look it up), Jewish persecution, pogroms (look them UP for God's sake), oh, man, so much humanity and history and so many cultures, this was NOT ABOUT AMERICA ALONE, Good God people, please learn your history.

There's a problem with that... a lot of people who served in World War II don't WANT to talk about it.

 

[Don'tLiveonMoon]

That's true. My grandpa served in World War II and he would never say a word to my dad or his siblings about it. We have some really gruesome pictures he took over there - they gave him all this fancy equipment so he could be a documentarian or something - but we don't really know much of anything about his experiences there.
Erin