ePub Women and Slavery; Vol. 2: The Modern Atlantic by From Ohio University Press in History

Description

December 7; 1941—the date of Japan’s surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor—is "a date which will live" in American history and memory; but the stories that will live and the meanings attributed to them are hardly settled. In movies; books; and magazines; at memorial sites and public ceremonies; and on television and the internet; Pearl Harbor lives in a thousand guises and symbolizes dozens of different historical lessons. In A Date Which Will Live; historian Emily S. Rosenberg examines the contested meanings of Pearl Harbor in American culture. Rosenberg considers the emergence of Pearl Harbor’s symbolic role within multiple contexts: as a day of infamy that highlighted the need for future U.S. military preparedness; as an attack that opened a "back door" to U.S. involvement in World War II; as an event of national commemoration; and as a central metaphor in American-Japanese relations. She explores the cultural background that contributed to Pearl Harbor’s resurgence in American memory after the fiftieth anniversary of the attack in 1991. In doing so; she discusses the recent “memory boom” in American culture; the movement to exonerate the military commanders at Pearl Harbor; Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short; the political mobilization of various groups during the culture and history "wars" of the 1990s; and the spectacle surrounding the movie Pearl Harbor. Rosenberg concludes with a look at the uses of Pearl Harbor as a historical frame for understanding the events of September 11; 2001.