Infamy

"It was just luck — where you happened to be and how the Japanese planned to bomb," Paul Perrault told the Los Angeles Times. Perrault, 90, was a naval officer who watched the attack on Pearl Harbor unfold from his light cruiser on Dec. 7, 1941. "People say, 'God was with you,' but I think, 'How about the 3,000 that died?' How come God wasn't with them?" It is an unanswerable question. The memory of that day of infamy, the event that ushered America into the Second World War 69 years ago, has faded almost to the vanishing point. But the estimated 4,000 Pearl Harbor survivors who are still alive won’t forget it. Neither should we.