This Wednesday, Dec. 7, marks the 75th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and several air fields around the island.

The attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States into World War II, which our nation had remained out of for more than two years while fascist dictatorships rolled through Europe and Imperial Japanese forces claimed islands and territory in the Pacific.

The USS West Virginia (BB-48), USS Tennessee (BB-43) and USS Arizona (BB-39) burn at the moorings during the attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The Tennessee was trapped at its moorings for 10 days before being freed and sent to Puget Sound Naval Yard for repairs and modernization. It returned to service in February 1942. The West Virginia sank, but was salvaged and refloated. It returned to service by July 1944. The Arizona, flagship of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, sank with 1,177 men aboard, including Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, and remains at Pearl Harbor as a memorial to the 2,403 killed and 1,178 wounded.

At the time, it was expected that the United States would likely enter the war on the side of the Allies, but more probably because of military or political provocation by Nazi Germany or fascist Italy.

U.S. military planners expected an inevitable confrontation with Imperial Japan, but further down the line and more likely in the open sea or while attempting to liberate a Japanese-held island, making a surprise attack by Japan on the American naval base even more unanticipated.

Inexplicably, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States in the days after Pearl Harbor, pulling our nation into a war on two fronts, leading to the liberation of Europe by May 1945 and the defeat of Japan by that August.

After World War II, the United States helped rebuild Japan, which forever renounced the use of military force under Article 9 of its 1947 constitution.

The U.S.-Japanese alliance is now the linchpin of military and economic geopolitics in the Pacific.

Current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced Monday, Dec. 5, that he plans to visit Pearl Harbor this month with U.S. President Barack Obama to pay his respects and renew the call for peace around the world.

Abe will be the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit Pearl Harbor since the attack. He will be reciprocating a visit Obama made to the city of Hiroshima in May. In the first-ever visit by a sitting president to the first city an American bomber destroyed with an atomic bomb, Obama made the plea for a world without nuclear weapons.

If these two bitterest of foes can become inseparable allies, surely it gives the rest of the world hope for peace.

More than 2,400 Americans were killed on Dec. 7, 1941, the deadliest attack on U.S. soil until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 60 years later.

Those attacks also prompted an immediate military response and young American men and women to enlist to fight. The clear difference was Pearl Harbor was a military attack by one nation on another while 9/11 was an attack on civilians purely to instill fear.

World War II was concluded just three and half years after the U.S. entered the war, while more than 15 years after 9/11, American troops are still fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. Although combat operations officially ended in 2014, there are still tens of thousands of coalition forces supporting the Afghan military in its fight against insurgents.

The number of men and women who served in World War II and helped shape the world thereafter is dwindling, but the sacrifices they made created a safer, freer world. Even 75 years later, we still owe them our sincerest thanks.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor