LIMA — Days of infamy do not always start out as such. They often begin much like any other day, with nothing suggesting that a calamity is about to ensue. On this date 74 years ago, America experienced one such day, and in modern America, mass shootings like the recent ones in San Bernardino, California, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, have sent the nation reeling.
“Human beings have been shaped by millions of years of evolution to want to anticipate threats so they are not caught off guard,” according to Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama. “Unfortunately, attacks like Pearl Harbor, terrorist strikes, and mass shootings shock us and disrupt our sense of security. They raise the possibility that our ability to recognize future threats may be far weaker than we had hoped.”
There was nothing the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, to alert the people at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii that an attack from the Imperial Japanese Navy was imminent, one which would cost the lives of more than 2,400 Americans. To be sure, there was knowledge of the war going on in Europe, but there was no thought that it would be felt by America, especially at such a large scale.
“It was the great heyday of isolationism,” according to Perry Bush, a history professor at Bluffton University. “Millions of Americans saw World War I as a terrible mistake and didn’t want us getting involved in Europe’s wars.”
Once the attack occurred, however, America was quick to respond, declaring war on Japan a day later. However, in a further attempt to protect itself, the U.S. government detained more than 127,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry.
“It’s what sometimes happens when people get scared enough,” according to sociologist Katherine Newman, senior vice-chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. “We cast a larger dragnet.”
Both Newman and Bush expressed concern with anti-Muslim rhetoric that has come out of some recent attacks, including San Bernardino, finding parallels between these views and views of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
“We don’t want the millions of innocent people of Muslim faith to be confused for these extremist terrorists,” Newman said. “If we don’t look at those extremist connections, we will end up creating a dragnet over millions of people who are as shocked and horrified over these events as anyone else.”
“Painting people with such a broad brush doesn’t do any credit to us,” Bush said.
