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Eighty-three years ago last weekend, Americans spent most of the day contemplating with uneasy hearts what the future would bring.
Dec. 7, 1941, was the day Japan opted for the gamble that Americans would be caught off-guard, and that this country would succumb to the imperialistic intentions of the Far East power.
Japan did succeed on that day 83 years ago. It caught America's Pacific Fleet off-guard, resulting in a heavy loss of life, as well as ships, as well as other defense hardware.
However, the fool's paradise that the surprise attack on America concocted for Japan was destined to be short-lived, once this country's massive war capabilities were geared up and began to be unleashed against this enemy.
Then, in 1945, Japan's bad move of December 1941 was sealed as tragic folly as the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered atomic destruction and associated horrors that brought Japan to the "table" on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri for unconditional surrender.
What the two atomic bombs dealt to Japan also opened the eyes of the rest of the world to the unimaginable destruction and death that could be inflicted in any future world war, if nations chose to engage in such a wide-scale conflict. The realization sunk in quickly that even the totality of this planet might be at risk.
That is even more true now than it was then, with long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads stored, but ready, in the arsenals of enemies of this country as well as in America itself.
The realities in play always must be kept in mind, urging caution rather than itchy nuclear trigger fingers that could lead to a terrible destiny.
The "ranks" of Americans who are old enough to remember that fateful day, Dec. 7, 1941, thin markedly each year, as is true with many of those living, but who were too young to comprehend what had happened and what was continuing to happen.
Unfortunately, too many Americans today lack important knowledge of the lessons that Dec. 7, 1941, and the total World War II experience chiseled into the consciousness of people of this nation back then.
Initially at Pearl Harbor that day, the leading edge of the attack involved 183 Japanese planes. "There had never been anything like it in the history of warfare," said Smithsonian magazine in its December 2016 issue.
A month earlier, in its November 2016 issue, Smithsonian included a story about the first woman pilot to die in active service after surviving a close call at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Cornelia Fort was giving a flying lesson to a student who was at the controls of a tiny single-engine trainer, when they saw the glint of a plane in the distance that seemed to be heading right at them.
"She grabbed the stick (of her plane) and climbed furiously," the magazine said, "passing so close to the plane that the ... windows (of her little trainer) shook."
The story continued:
"Looking down, she saw a Japanese fighter. Off to the west, she 'saw something detach itself from a plane and come glistening down,' she later recalled. 'My heart turned over convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the harbor.'"
War had begun and America learned -- as it re-learned on Sept. 11, 2001 -- that it never should allow itself to feel too safe.