Men waiting to enlist at recruiting headquarters in San Francisco, California December 1941. Image: Wiki Commons
Men waiting to enlist at recruiting headquarters in San Francisco, California December 1941. Image: Wiki Commons
World War II should have been the death knell for fascism, but as we now know, fascism never dies. It just hibernates until the right sort comes along and reanimates it; an apostle of mass-manipulation, of lies, an exploiter of racism.
Today, December 7th 2025, marks 84 years since the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. On the following day, December 8th, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on Japan. Then three days later, December 11th, on Nazi Germany.
Our allies joined us in our declaration of war on Japan at the same time we did, but they preceded us in their war efforts in Europe by more than two years. The U.K. declared war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939 following Hitler’s invasion of Poland, with France, Australia, New Zealand that same day, followed by Canada a week later on September 10th. The Soviet Union officially declared war on Germany in 1941, following their invasion of Poland in 1939. American politics and isolationism kept us out for another 27 months.
Historians say World War II was a good war. I’m not so sure there’s such a thing as a “good war,” but it was certainly a righteous war, and one that had to be won.
Following FDR’s declaration of war on December 8th, young men lined up to volunteer all over the nation. Assuming the youngest of whom lied about his age that day, and was actually only 16 years old, that means there are no WW II veterans who aren’t over 100 years old. And very soon, there will be no one alive with living memories of that conflict.
World War II exposed heroism, courage, brilliance, and had it not been for the legends surrounding their efforts, we would have likely never heard the names of John F. Kennedy, Dwight David Eisenhower, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, let alone seen their names on the ballot.
My own father was (sort of) drafted by a different recruiting board. When he was 22 years old, he was approached by some government agents who convinced him that his field of nuclear chemistry could be pivotal in defeating the enemy. So he signed on to a top secret program that would be known as the Manhattan Project.
He hadn’t met my mother yet, so he had no strings attached. He went where they sent him. Los Alamos New Mexico, Chicago, Oak Ridge Tennessee, Hanford Washington, Berkeley California, where he eventually took up residence with my mother after the war.
These are from his notes for a documentary that was stillborn. But his story was finally told in the 2013 Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary “Hanford.”
Because Oak Ridge had to be built on a crash basis, none of the roads was paved during my year there. This brings up another subject: rain. Oak Ridge was located in an area of Eastern Tennessee that received about 60 inches of rain a year. It rained constantly, and the roads were always a thick yellow goo. Dress shoes were out of the question; all the men wore heavy work boots, but I cannot recall what the women wore. If it sounds as though I am complaining about our situation in Oak Ridge, such is not the case. We all knew how lucky we were not to be in a foxhole on Omaha Beach or on Iwo Jima. We did not suffer at all, and we knew that. Still, we were convinced that what we were doing was crucial, even if we could not, and did not, discuss it. Mud and rotten food notwithstanding.
Finally, there was the selective service draft for men. I recall the army hauled all of us men down to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, in one of those olive-gray army buses. The army officer in charge told the selective service board that they had to give us all a 2B classification (important to war effort), and without further ado, it was done.”
405,399 Americans died during World War II. The U.K. lost 244,723, France 212,000, Australia 23,000, Canada over 40,000, New Zealand 11,625 the highest rate per capita in the commonwealth. With the Soviets losing 8.6 MILLION soldiers.
The enemy wasn’t the people of Germany and Japan per se, though they did ultimately pay a terrible price. The enemy was the ideologies of imperialism and fascism that their leaders embraced. The aggression, the brutality, the cruelty, the racism that they inflicted upon their neighbors in China, and throughout the overrun countries of Europe.
Our fathers, uncles, mothers, aunts and grandparents sacrificed in ways that are unimaginable today to defeat evil.
That should have been the death knell for fascism, but as we now know, fascism never dies. It just hibernates until the right sort comes along and reanimates it; an apostle of mass-manipulation, of lies, an exploiter of racism. A demagogue whose only talent is mining the fears and ignorance of the simpletons of the land, helped along by a massive right-wing propaganda machine.
But don’t worry, that can’t happen here.
Honorary crash test dummy for Hammocks R Us, intrepid toxicity tester for Laphroaig Distillery, mobile Javaslinger, moonshiner in training, part time writer, part time foodie, part time flirt, ponderer of all things Cosmic, hot sauce aficionado, skeptic of conspiracy theorists, challenger of balderdashery, antithetical to all things Trump, Fool Emeritus from Whatsamatta U, three-time champion over corporate evil, downtrodden survivor of the Coulter Wars, psychotic women, cancer, heart disease and my own poor judgement.
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