The attack that made the sleeping giant.

There's a famous quote from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." In a recent WWII documentary I watched, this quote was pointed out as fiction, and then went on to explain both that the US wasn't a sleeping giant at the time, and the quote is more likely concerning China, which also wasn't a sleeping giant at the time. China, in fact, had been invaded and divided by Japan as it worked to take over the western Pacific rim.

Regardless, on this date in 1941, Japan attacked the US Navy ships at Pearl Harbor, and kick-started the US war effort in the Pacific. Sure, the US was "helping" our friends and families in Europe with supplies, and small troops prior to the attack in Pearl Harbor. But it wasn't an economic or military might yet. Maybe the sleeping was the kinetic energy (or economy) that the US had, but still reeling from WWI, it wasn't entirely unified or coordinated before the attack, like it was after. The pendulum swung hard to "not war," and people were just getting on with the next generation after the Great War. So we didn't just pick up our kit and get back in it, we had to get back together and make some kit to get back in it. We didn't wake up, but made our way.

Much better writers and historians have told the story since, and I'm not one of them. So, just remembering that 80 years ago that happened is about enough for me.

My grandfather fought in that war, in the Army, in the Pacific, against the Japanese. He never talked about it when I was a kid, or if he did, it didn't resonate at the time. He survived the war, clearly, but passed in the 1980s. He posthumously received a Purple Heart, apparently for being shot off a telephone pole. He wasn't shot. The story told to me is that the belt he used to climb the pole, where he was hanging wire for power or phone or something like that, was shot, causing him to fall to the ground. He was banged up, and spent a little time in the infirmary. I miss him, for all the grandpa reasons, not because of his war efforts.

Here, 80 years later, in 2021, Japan is locking down and keeping people out because of new COVID-19 variants.

I have a friend who I think is there now. She went earlier this year to visit family. She's from there, from somewhere in or near near Toyota, where the company is from which we get the vehicles. She's fantastic, does fantastic things, and she inspires me to try to do a little more or a little better. She moved to America to attend college, where she learned engineering and English. She makes decisions with coin-flips, which is how she backpacked in Australia and Europe, and took a moped across Vietnam. And how she decided to switch from software to return to medical school, or to learn to fly a plane. I don't make those kinds of decisions, or any, really, by coin-flip. But every once in a while I think "she might be disappointed in my taking this easier road," and so I'll step out of my comfort zone. That kind of inspiration. She asks hard questions, seeking deep knowledge, and appreciates all the time and effort that comes out in an easy answer if known, or the discovery together when unknown.

Memory lane, because of Pearl Harbor.

Just an ordinary day, otherwise. Still working from home, avoiding crowds, washing hands more, and wearing masks in public because of the virus.

Everyone's healthy.