Dec. 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor attack's meaning is unfamiliar to many LI high school students, survey finds

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it "a date which will live in infamy."

But a recent survey of 350 Long Island high school students found little more than half knew the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched the United States into World War II. 

Historians and educators said the touchstone event must be remembered, honored and learned from as America prepares to observe the 83rd anniversary on Saturday.

"It doesn't surprise me," Dr. John Curatola, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and senior historian at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, said this week of the survey findings. "Working here what you see is a dearth of knowledge regarding the war: why it was fought, how it was won, what its legacies are. I think as events like Pearl Harbor get further behind us ... they're relegated to ancient history. We think they don't matter.

"But," he said, "the reverberations are still here today. We need to understand that."

An overwhelming number of Americans, he said, regarded World War I as Europe's war, sparking isolationist and pro-Nazi movements — both of which grew in the 1930s amid economic woes of the Great Depression.

Enemies saw the United States as a nation divided — and vulnerable to attack, Curatola said.

While America remained neutral more than two years into World War II, which began with Germany's invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Pearl Harbor changed everything.

Under the command of Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto and Chuichi Nagumo, the Japanese 1st Air Fleet, which had sailed undercover for Hawaii in late November, launched more than 350 Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighters, Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers and Aichi D3A "Val" dive bombers to attack the U.S. fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

Due to a transcription error by Japanese diplomats, Japan failed to officially declare war before the attack, a fact that outraged Americans.

The first strike hit just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday, catching the American military asleep — in some cases, literally. By the time it was over, seven U.S. warships had been sunk, more than 180 aircraft were destroyed, and 2,393 American service members and civilians were dead, with another 1,178 wounded.

Though 16.4 million Americans went on to fight in World War II, just 66,143 were still alive as of Dec. 3, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

About 3,500 World War II veterans are still alive in New York. It is projected within the decade fewer than 300 of all World War II veterans will remain.

Just 19 Pearl Harbor survivors remain.

All of which, historians said, makes the findings of that survey, by the Long Island Council for the Social Studies and The Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage, alarming.

Remember the infamous John Belushi line from "Animal House": "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Well, just 60% of those students, mostly seniors, from eight schools in Nassau and seven in Suffolk knew significant details about Pearl Harbor. The rest had no idea.

"When we talk to students today, I get questions like: 'When did World War II happen? When did Vietnam happen?' " Long Island Air & Space Force Association president Fred DiFabio, 83, who served eight years in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, said. "They don't know."

Beginning at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, DiFabio's organization will honor veterans during its annual "The Dropping of the Roses" ceremony at the American Airpower Museum at Republic Airport in East Farmingdale, then will fly a World War II-era training plane to drop 83 roses at the Statue of Liberty.

Another rose will commemorate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Also to commemorate Pearl Harbor, some 80 midshipmen from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point will embark on a 22-mile ruck Saturday to One World Trade Center in Manhattan.

The executive director of the Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, Fred Sganga, says remembrance events remain important — especially as the generation of World War II veterans dwindles.

Two years ago, Sganga visited the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor.

"I was overwhelmed," he said.

The Arizona was one of three ships sunk in the attack that were built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The others were the battleship USS Tennessee and the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Helena.

Of the Arizona's 1,512 crew members, 1,177 were killed when a Japanese bomb hit the ship.

This week, Sganga told of a former resident of the veterans home, now deceased, who tried to enlist in the Navy days after Pearl Harbor but was turned away — because he was 16.

"So," Sganga said, "he goes to his cousin, who works in a local parish, gets him to alter the birth date on his baptismal certificate, then he goes to a different recruiting office — and joins ... I don't think we'd have many 16- and 17-year-olds today lying about their age to do that."

Alan Singer, who's tasked with preparing the next generation of teachers as the director of secondary education social studies at Hofstra University, said: "Not true."

One of his former students, now a teacher in the Bellmore-Merrick school district, enlisted — with a brother — not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"While FDR said Dec. 7, 1941, was 'a date which will live in infamy,' every generation has a date that will live in infamy," Singer said. "When I was in school in the 1960s, World War II was fought by my father's generation. Now, it is an event related to this generation's great-grandfathers — and it's been eclipsed by other events.

"But the lessons remain important, because Pearl Harbor was a moment that brings people together. Children pitch in, housewives pitch in, Long Island women go to war as part of the industrial workforce building planes that help the United States win the war.

"It's important to remember how the nation united."

Though the New York State Department of Education dedicates just a few paragraphs in the ninth- and 10th-grade social studies curriculum to the World War I-World War II era and just a sentence on Pearl Harbor in the guidelines for 11th- and 12th-graders, Singer said we must continue to connect the dots between historic touchstones, to explain why Pearl Harbor remains important.

As Col. Jason Halloren, a Museum of American Armor trustee who flew Black Hawk helicopter combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and served as a deputy commandant at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said: "The lessons of Pearl Harbor remain invaluable ...

"There's the notion your enemies are always building a better mousetrap," Halloren said. "The first attack on the World Trade Center [in 1993] proved you couldn't knock down the Towers using a bomb in the parking garage. What was learned? If you can't do it low you have to hit high. What should we learn from that? The same ones we learned from Pearl Harbor."

That, he said, is to consider all the strategic options that may be considered by your enemies — even if they seem inconceivable. And, he said, that America is better united than divided.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”