Infamy

By Stephen Richter | 2:52 a.m.

"December 7th, 1941 — a date which
will live in infamy"

On the seventh of December, 1981, an
eleven-year old boy and his father stared
down at the remains of the USS Arizona
at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I remember
standing next to a family of Japanese
tourists. Their son was my age and I
wondered how they must have felt being
them, being there, at a site so charged

with emotion and all that it represented.
We watched a video in the memorial’s
viewing room and that same family sat
three seats down from me. I remember
feeling angry at them. Their son smiled
at me and I didn’t smile back. “Gomen
nasai,” he said. I didn’t understand
Japanese when I was eleven. It meant
nothing to me.

In October of 1993, I learned how it felt
to be a U.S. Marine, standing next to a
Japanese family, at the Hiroshima Peace
Park in Japan. And although I hadn’t
been alive when it took place, I still felt
very sorry and somewhat responsible for
that place and what it represented. I
apologized to the family I was standing
next to for some reason. The
grandmother had surely been alive when
it happened. “Gomen nasai,” I said. I
bowed to her and left. I was leaving
Japan for good that day.

September 11th, 2001
CNN - DAY OF TERROR
A 21st century 'day of infamy'

I remember watching CNN every day for
a week after 9/11, until I couldn’t stand it
any more. I remember looking at the
footage from Iraq and Afghanistan and
feeling angry.
December 7th, 2009

We are, eight years into the war on terror,
just a couple years shy of the Soviet
Union’s record ten year occupation of
Afghanistan. In the fall of 1993 I studied
the doctrine of guerilla warfare at the
JWTC (Jungle Warfare Training Center)
Okinawa Japan, in the Northern Training
Area below the prefecture of Nago. We
took a class on the mistakes the USSR
made during their decade-long
occupation of Afghanistan.

“That is why
the Russians got their asses handed to
them in Kabul,” said Sgt. Samoa, “that
is why the United States will never do
something as asinine as try to occupy a
country like that for any extended period
of time - not after what we learned from
Vietnam, and definitely not in my beloved
Marine Corps,” he said. We all laughed.

Psychologists say that one of the most
difficult crimes for a victim to recover
from is Home Invasion 

Ghandi once said that an eye for an eye
leaves the whole world blind.

As a veteran, a father, an American, and
a citizen of the global community, I can
only hope that on this December 7th we
can all pause for a moment of silence to
respect those who have been lost, on all
those infamous days in human history.

Whether we were there or not, we are all
responsible in one way or another, in
some way for what comes next. For all
those who have lost their loved-ones at
the hands of their fellow man,

Gomen, Gomen nasai...