TMC: Thirty Miles of Corruption

Now 92, Stratton managed to survive the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, an event that destroyed much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and catapulted the nation into World War II. This past week, Stratton gathered at the naval station near Honolulu with his few remaining comrades to remember and pay homage to the more than 2,500 soldiers who died that day.

But what truly disturbs and saddens Stratton is the way the “date which will live in infamy,” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it in his speech to Congress the next day, is slowly being forgotten.

“They don’t even teach about it in many schools anymore,” he laments. “But anyone who doesn’t think it’s important should have been there with me that morning at the end of one of those guns, shooting at the enemy. I think that would change anybody’s mind.”

Dr. Hiroya Sugano(c), former World War Two B25 bomber pilot Jack DeTour(L) and former World War Two Japanese fighter pilot Shiro Wakita pour bourbon whiskey into the “Remembrance Well” aboard the USS Arizona Memorial during the “Blackened Canteen” ceremony honoring the 74th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument in Honolulu, Hawaii December 6, 2015. REUTERS/Hugh Gentry

As the sun rose over the USS Arizona Memorial, the two former enemy pilots joined the “Blackened Canteen” service on the eve of the 74th anniversary of the Dec. 7 attack, which took 2,403 lives and drew the United States into World War Two.