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Editorial: Infamy + 76 years

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, and half-staff flags recall the “date which will live infamy” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed the surprise attack by Japan on the United States.

Seventy-six years have faded the immediacy of that attack, after which the United States swore never to be surprised again; an oath renewed with a vengeance after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Few indeed are the veterans still living who survived the attack; and few are the residents who can still tell about what was happening and how it affected their lives. But the memories were etched in the national psyche forever.

The Gazette-Journal of Dec. 11, 1941, stated in an editorial that “The Long Dreaded Hour Has Struck” propelling the nation into its greatest war.

Here are excerpts from that contemporary account:

“It would be a waste of words to dwell upon the infamous nature of that unprovoked assault upon our outposts by a country with whom were at peace, whose env...

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