With trepidation and no regrets, poking my nose in again on a significant day in American history---December 7, 1941: the response to the attack was pure retaliation, vindication, not from ideological notions of fighting a fascist menace in Europe or Japan. U.S. was mostly isolationist at the time.
I can't visit war monuments or cemeteries unless they are very old. It's because I do remember and read and write of military history. My wife and I were close last year to Vimy Ridge in northern France, and the Normandy beaches, but they're too much for me now; they bring too many tears.
I can't visit the Dutch village where my father parachuted when his RCAF bomber was shot down en route to Hamburg barely six months after America entered the war. His crew---Bob Whytox, 19 of Montreal, and Williams and Worthington, both of Great Britain---are buried there. I allow memory of them to stoke my activism.
It seems the only way to serve their sacrifices now.
