An important lesson learned from World War II

Many older Americans who saw the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 concluded that the attack was like reliving the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

For me, there were some similarities, but there were big differences, too.

The September attack was neither directed by an enemy nation nor done with military might. It was accomplished by zealots who used our own airplanes as instruments of death.

Unlike Pearl Harbor, this attack hit close to home. Many of us worried about family members who live in the areas under assault or who were flying that day. My daughter's sister-in-law works at the Pentagon. It was hours before we learned that she was safe.

My heart goes out to the families of those who died. I had walked on the grounds that were under assault in New York. I had been to the World Trade Center, gone up its elevators, looked out its windows.

But perhaps the biggest difference between Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 was that this time I watched the attacks on television.

On Sept. 11, the sounds of the explosions, the piercing screams, the balls of fire and the thick billows of smoke pouring from the towers in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia just outside Washington, D.C., and the airplane crash in Pennsylvania were not events described to us by a voice on the radio. We saw and heard them for ourselves. We saw the stricken faces of those who were wandering around covered with dust, dazed and terrified.

Back in 1941, we had only the radio to rely on.

Sunday morning, Dec. 7, started out quietly. It was bright and sunny, with a touch of the coming winter chill. After church, my father stretched out on the sofa to listen to a football game. I was going into the living room to pick up a book. Suddenly, the game was stopped, and we heard this message from Washington:

"The White House announces a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Please stay tuned for further announcements."

I was stunned. My father rose to his feet, and we were joined by my anxious mother. I asked my father what the attack meant. He hesitated a bit, then said: "I think this could mean war."

The game resumed, and more reports followed, but they were sketchy. One came from a reporter in Honolulu who had managed to climb to the top of a tall building. He filed one of the first eyewitness reports of just how terrible the devastation to the U.S. Pacific fleet was.

President Bush spoke to us on television just 30 minutes after the Sept. 11 attacks, and again that evening. In 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the nation the next day, uttering these now-famous words: "Yesterday, Dec. 7, is a day that will live in infamy."

The gravity of the situation became apparent only after he formally declared war on Japan.

Because Pearl Harbor was so geographically removed from us, my reaction to the attack was more delayed and less emotional than it was when I heard of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Except, that is, for the emotion we all felt toward the enemy: the "Japs." That was the slang word we used for the Japanese. The term was even common in the print media at the time. Back then, we made no distinction between the Japanese who had attacked us at Pearl Harbor and the Japanese Americans who were living among us. There was panic, especially on the West Coast, where people feared that the Japanese might attack coastal cities.

The result was the roundup of Japanese Americans, who were forced to leave their homes and live behind fences for the duration of the war. That was a sad chapter in our history, and I feel bad that I, too, carried prejudiced feelings at that time.

My husband was in the Navy, stationed at the Jacksonville Air Station during World War II. Japanese prisoners of war were put to work around the base. I remember one young POW at the commissary who often carried groceries to my car. I was expecting my first child.

One day, I noticed that he had brushed away tears. Since he didn't speak English, I pointed to his eyes. He glanced around furtively and then pulled out a picture of a Japanese woman who could have been his mother. I realized that he probably was lonely in a strange land. As a prisoner of war, he had fears, too, and was trying to cope.

Since there were signs all around that warned against dealing with POWS, I nodded and left.

I was glad and relieved that in the aftermath of the September attacks President Bush sent a message to the nation urging acceptance and tolerance of Arab Americans and Muslims. I went down the street to check on my friends at the filling station where I get my gaso ine. They are Arab Americans.

We talked about how shaken we all were by the events of Sept. 11.

We had come a long way from Pearl Harbor.

- LaVerne Hammond, who divides her time between Wisconsin and Florida, is an octogenarian at work on her memoirs. Write her in care of the St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.

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