Several commentators have mentioned that September 11 of last year reminded them of the attacks on Pearl Harbor of 50 years ago. There are some similarities in the posturing and in the excessive attitudes of hate and revenge. But today, there's no romantic notion that women or men can be safe just by staying in the United States. The battle against evil is at our doorstep, and there is great need for each one to subdue the extremism of both a desire for revenge and a naive expectation that the challenge before us will just go away if we ignore it.
On December 7, 1941, I was a senior in college. My boyfriend and several of his friends came over to the women's dorm so we could talk about the attack on Pearl Harbor. We didn't have television then, so we weren't getting minute-by-minute accounts of what was happening. But we knew that our lives would change. Exactly how, and how much, we didn't know.
Later, as I waited for my fiancé to come home from the war so we could be married, I associated mostly with women co-workers, many of whom had extreme political views. One woman, however, was different. She was helpful to others, and was moderate in her language and opinions. She had deeply held religious beliefs which, at that time, none of the rest of us had. As I look back on it now, she also lived those beliefs in their totality, instead of just choosing certain ones that were convenient.
