Today is Pearl Harbor day. While it happened almost a lifetime away, 67 years ago, and almost ten years before I was born, it has had an impact on me, and the entire world. And while it was a tragedy, it shaped this nation in ways that are still very visible.
The first effect of the unprovoked attack of our fleet at Pearl Harbor was to awaken the U.S. to the fact that we were not isolated enough from Asia and Europe to avoid involvement. This wakeup was painful, thousands died and there was tremendous property damage, less than what happened sixty years later on 9/11, but not by any order of magnitude. People were shocked loose from their bearings, and great sympathy for the victims and a powerful anger ensued, and America was now in the war, and in it to win.
World War Two was very costly. A large portion of a whole generation of young men were lost in the battles. Marriages and families were delayed, and women, children and old men were left behind to run the farms and the factories to produce the food and supplies needed for the effort. Women learned to rivet, weld and other “manly” tasks, putting the final nails in the coffin for the ideas that women were the “weaker sex”. And while the armies made do with little, civilians at home also struggled, with rationing implemented for meat, butter, sugar, tires and countless other basic needs.
We all know the war was won. But the social events that began at the end of the war reshaped America, and much of the rest of the world, with a legacy that continues today. At the end of the war, there was a whole generation of men (less the war casualties) who had been to other parts of the U.S., and the world, and would never be content to go back and stay on the farm where they were raised. They had friends from States all over that they wanted to see again, and the automobile had come of age. From this, the motel was born, you see many from that era in rural areas even today, placed along a highway somewhere between point “A” and point “B”. And the demand for new and improved highways grew, spawning such seeming dream roads as the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
All the marriages that were delayed began to happen rapidly. And the delayed families from the marriages before the war began flowing at the same time as families from new marriages, producing a large population spike known as the “baby boom” (this is where I fit into the story). Of course, all those new families needed housing, an industry that changed from small individual enterprises to large companies creating big, even huge subdivisions. Schools were needed for all these children (and I remember large classes and portable buildings almost throughout my elementary school years).
Of course, all this building, and supplying the materials for it, and the road building, and supplying the materials for it, and the demand for automobiles, appliance, steel and countless other elements in the process created a great demand for workers of all stripes, including the teachers needed to educate all the youngsters.
America moved off the farm, into subdivisions and into a world of economic prosperity like nothing ever seen before. While there were many parts of the world that had a long struggle to replace the bombed and burnt parts of their countries, America had little domestic damage beyond Pearl Harbor itself. But World War Two changed America from a nation suffering a long standing economic malaise and content to remain distant from the rest of the world into a booming economic powerhouse, active in world affairs and generous in its support of the victims of the war and natural disasters.
While we may have overreached from time to time since, we are still a generous and involved part of the world, and the road to that change began when the first bomb dropped at Pearl Harbor.