Thread: News absence - Remember Pearl Harbor!

I posted a note on History Forum about lack of news about Dec 7 anniversary.

Originally Posted by mathman

I posted a note on History Forum about lack of news about Dec 7 anniversary.

Agree, rather quiet. Too many other distractions I guess.

WWII is becoming ancient history.

Are we at the point where WWII history telling gets a bit muddled, sprinkled with lies, romanticized and slanted towards some political ideology? IOW does the truth slowly gets lost in time?

There may be a sweet spot where distance provides clarity.

Before and after that point may be less reliable,unless we are talking new unearthed facts far into the future


And yes beware of accounts from interested parties (and the fog of war ,of course)

Then the war archaeologists come along and do something akin to accident reconstruction using evidence garnered from the battlefield. In some cases rewriting the history books. When it comes to eyewitness accounts of course it’s only the survivors’ recollections and I’m sure there are many unwritten accounts because no one survived to tell. Survivors probably can’t give you the whole picture since they were too focused on staying alive and objectives.

Actually eyewitness accounts are my favourite form of war history. Every Canadian should read Vimy by Pierre Berton. Some absolutely shocking descriptions of what survivors saw in battle. As veterans die off we may have to trust the battlefield archaeologists’ findings even if it differs from what we’ve learned over the years.

There is also this

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pr...yABEgI9DPD_BwE

I read it some 30 years ago

The Knights of Bushido

Netflix has a ten episode show called Greatest Events of WWII in colour and it's pretty good. Doesn't color things with too strong of an American perspective like other shows on it that I have watched before. Like their episode on the Battle of Midway was great in showing how the Americans bungled their advantage but then were saved by what amounted to a lot of luck and a small number of highly trained dive bombers.