At 8:45 a.m., on Sept. 11, 2001, the first airliner hit the World Trade Center. It was a clear, sunny Tuesday. People were grabbing coffee, maybe a bagel, and heading up to work in the 110-story buildings.
At 7:55 a.m., on Dec. 7, 1941, the first Japanese fire hit Pearl Harbor. It was a quiet Sunday morning with some broken clouds mostly clustered around the mountains. Many of the military personnel aboard the fleet anchored in the harbor and stationed at Hickam Field were finishing breakfast, just starting their day.
The more recent of these two horrific events seemed an echo of the earlier one. Although separated by 60 years, both were attacks on American soil. Both came as a surprise to the victims. In both, the death tolls (2,403 at Pearl Harbor; at last count, 3,533 estimated dead at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the crash site in Pennsylvania) were beyond imagining.
President Roosevelt said: “I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.”
President Bush said: “Make no mistake. The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. The resolve of our great nation is being tested.”
Oil still leaks to the surface from the hulk of the battleship Arizona. Fires still smolder beneath the remains of the World Trade Center. Do the attacks in New York and Washington still seem to recall the one in Hawaii three generations earlier? How do the ways the nation responded to the two assaults compare? After 14 weeks, does the 12/7 9/11 comparison still hold? To address these questions, we interviewed an array of people, some who lived through World War II and some who have studied it. Here is what they had to say:
Sam Ozaki
Japanese-American
“After watching the World Trade Center attacks,” said Sam Ozaki, 77, who lives in Rogers Park, “one of my first thoughts was: Well, here we go again. Now they’ll be targeting Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans just like they targeted us.”
Ozaki was a 17-year-old high school senior in Wilmington, Calif., on Dec. 7, 1941. He says daily life in school remained “tense,” but uneventful, thanks to understanding classmates and teachers, until late in January, when three FBI agents came to his home and took away his father.
In February, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order No. 9066 to establish internment camps — or “concentration camps,” as Ozaki refers to them — for Japanese-Americans without any due process. In April, he and the rest of his family were moved to an assembly center at Santa Anita Racetrack, where they lived in a horse stall, before being transferred to a permanent camp in Arkansas.
“The big difference between then and now, of course, is that in our case it was our own government and Roosevelt and military leaders that had targeted us,” said Ozaki. “Not only that, but other organizations like labor unions, American Legion, newspapers, and military leaders did too. In this case, it’s been mostly individuals and small fringe groups showing prejudice.
“At the government level now, from President Bush on down, they’ve been saying right from the start that Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans are like all other citizens and should be treated accordingly. There’s a similarity, but differences too.”
Ozaki’s ticket from an internment camp was enlisting in a segregated Japanese-American Army unit, which served with distinction in Italy and France. When he left the military in 1945, he came to Chicago to be with a sister — “I still wasn’t allowed to be in California or the West Coast” — and enrolled at Roosevelt and Loyola universities. He became the first Japanese-American principal in the Chicago Public School system (Taft, Lakeview and Harrison high schools).
“You’d like to think the government has learned its lesson,” he said, “but let’s not forget there were something like 600 to 800 detainees not charged with anything after Sept. 11. Then, they’ve sent out I don’t know how many letters to Middle Easterners between the ages of 18 and 33 to come in for `voluntary’ questioning.”
Raymond Emory
Historian, Pearl Harbor Survivors Association
“There’s no comparison. No comparison. None whatsoever. World War II was an all-out war. There were sugar rations. No gasoline. Everybody`s living high off the hog these days. “
Chuck Schaden
Host of “Those Were The Days,” 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays on WDCB-FM 90.9
“The difference between the two is that in 1941, we had no immediate on-the-spot reports of anything. There were no eyewitnesses until much later in the day. With Sept. 11, half the nation saw it happen. We sat there in disbelief; if we didn’t see the one tower fall, we saw the other. But we were scared on both sides of the 60-year gap. In 1941, people were lining up at the recruitment offices; in September, people were lining up to volunteer to do whatever they could do.
“In 2001, we’re saying, `It can’t happen here,’ even though we had had Oklahoma City. We were almost all eyewitnesses to Sept. 11, whereas on Dec. 7, we were just getting information as it was trickling out. We didn’t get any shortwave radio reports from Hawaii until the late afternoon Chicago time. They didn’t have any experts talking on and on, so they went back to programming — but there were interruptions, Civil Defense warnings, war bulletins. People figured that if the Japanese could get to Pearl Harbor, they might be able to get to San Francisco. There was panic — everybody was shell-shocked — but the radio remained calm and the newsmen reported only the news they had.
“I don’t think there was much second-guessing in 1941. Everyone was listening to the president of the United States; there weren’t so many spokesmen up and down the line. Rarely did they have any speculation about it. And the war did not go well for us in the beginning. We were not prepared for it.”
John Jeffries
Historian at University of Maryland-Baltimore County, author of “Wartime America: The World War II Home Front.”
“For some Americans, the attack on Pearl Harbor was clarifying and even a relief of sorts. The American position in world events was now clear.
“Since there was a context to the attack and since it was a military attack in 1941, the 9/11 attack may have been even more shocking and given a greater sense of personal risk and vulnerability. It seemed to come from almost nowhere and involved civilians as well as the Pentagon. With the anthrax scare, there was a greater sense of personal, and not just national, vulnerability.
“We might also remember that Executive Order 9066 leading to the incarceration of Japanese-Americans was issued two months after Pearl Harbor, but no such policy for Arab-Americans or Muslin-Americans has happened or is likely to occur. Such evidence as there is of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim behavior suggests it ids sporadic, pretty unusual, and actively opposed by the government and public figures.
“Here history matters. Memories of the World War II home front and the treatment of Japanese-Americans have contributed powerfully to the governmental and public resolve not to let it happen again.”
Johnny Frigo
Jazz violinist
“With Pearl Harbor, I can remember exactly where I was,” said Frigo, 84. “I was in the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, to see a girl that I was nuts about. I was playing at the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit with my group, The Four Californians (none of us were from California). And I was living in Kingsbury, Ontario, in a lighthouse.
“Anyhow, just as I was coming out of the tunnel — right exactly as I came out of the tunnel into Windsor — there was Roosevelt on the radio saying the war had started. The radios didn’t work until you got out of the tunnel, and the first words I heard were from President Roosevelt, just as I [emerged] into the sunshine in Canada. That’s what happened. I’ll never forget it.
“With Sept. 11, I was sleeping, right where I’m talking to you now, at my Lake Shore Drive condominium. The phone rang. It was my son Rick, who lives in Villa Park. He called up and said, `Dad, turn on the TV, goodbye.’ I turned it on and the smoke was just beginning to billow out of the first tower. And I stayed in front of that TV for the next four or five hours, before I had to go to the bathroom. . . .
“Back then [in 1941], things were sadder, and war was a word used to describe other places. We hadn’t had a war since 1914. We hadn’t been threatened since then. We were all Ozzie and Harriet. Right now, things are good. I flew to L.A. three weeks ago. I was glad when the plane lifted off and I was glad when it touched down. But the rest of the time, I was unconcerned.”
Joe Micek
Lane Tech, Class of ’41
“Things seemed a lot clearer in ’41,” he said. “I’m not even sure this is a war. We’re fighting terrorists in something like 50 countries this time and only God knows what the outcome will be.
“When they hit Pearl Harbor, America seemed to meld into one and was ready to roll up its sleeves and go to work, though. I got the same impression after 9/11. People really seemed really ready to go out and do their part.
“We’re supposed to be the greatest generation, but it was kind of refreshing to see all the flag-waving again and the duty, honor, country attitudes. It’s still going on to a large degree. It’s pretty exciting for us older fellows to see.
“When they brought that first body bag back with the CIA agent, it was something to read and hear the father say how proud he was of his son doing his duty. A lot of guys I know were gratified to hear him say that.”
Bob Kelly
Former football star
The week before Dec. 7, 1941, Bob Kelly played football for a Leo High School team that won the city’s Prep Bowl championship by beating Tilden Tech 46-13 in front of 95,000 fans in Soldier Field.
Kelly was a junior and, for the rest of his high school days in ’41 and ’42 — including another Prep Bowl appearance, he says it was like a dark cloud hung over everything.
“Nobody knew what was going to happen or where they were going to be after high school,” said Kelly, 76. “Some of my buddies enlisted, even before they graduated, and others waited. The one thing you knew for sure: If you were 18 and healthy, you’d be doing some sort of military service.
More Top Picks Dog Crates
“After a while, you sort of accepted how things were. Life went on, and everything seemed pretty distant. Most of us hadn’t even heard of Pearl Harbor before it was bombed. We’d read and hear about these blackouts they’d have on the coasts, but nothing like that was here. Once in a while I remember we’d have emergency drills at school, but that was about it.
“The biggest thing we had to get used to was rationing: If you didn’t have stamps, you could forget about food and gas. I don’t see anything like that now. …
“I was watching TV on Sept. 11 and saw the second airplane hit,” he said. “I saw the whole thing live and I hope those louses are burning in hell. Things have settled down now. I think the way a lot of people have tried to just go about their business — which has been the best thing to do — is a lot like what happened in ’41.
“Of course, we were told there was a Japanese behind every tree and even if you were Chinese it didn’t make any difference. Today if you’re wearing a turban and a beard, you’re supposed to be guilty of something.”
William H. McNeill
Professor emeritus of history at the University of Chicago
“The difference is the TV. You saw it actually it happen before your eyes. At Pearl Harbor, as you know, the truth was officially withheld from the American people throughout the war. I happened to arrive in Hawaii, having just completed my basic training. I was genuinely shocked to discover that President Roosevelt had lied to us about how many ships had been sunk. That was the way it was possible to keep secrets in those days. It still seems to me a strange decision, because the Japanese most certainly knew what they had sunk. I don’t see why he couldn’t tell the American public, but he didn’t. This is a very big difference, nowadays with TV cameras in this case actually on site. They’re doing their level best in Afghanistan today to keep TV cameras out of the way and so far have been very successful. I don’t know what will happen if they capture bin Laden and if we’ll have a TV camera to show it.
“The other thing to say is Pearl Harbor was expected, in the sense not Pearl Harbor but that war was coming. I don’t think there was a person in the United States who didn’t think that was going to happen, although I suppose there were some people who thought it shouldn’t happen. The question was whether it would be Germany or Japan or both. At least in the circles I moved in the major enemy was felt to be Germany rather than Japan. It was not a surprise when we went to war. We already had the draft. . . . This [Sept. 11] came from the blue as far as my consciousness was concerned. . . . It was a greater surprise, I must say, a much greater surprise. “I think, so far, the consolidation of national sentiment behind the effort of retaliation is strong. I don’t think it is as — I don’t know if I have a good basis for saying so — it does not seem to me as deep. Nobody wants a draft. Nobody wants the price controls. Nobody wants the other aspects of World War II crisis management that came very quickly without any resistance almost in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The whole rationing of goods; gasoline was rationed. You couldn’t ride your car. These are things the American public hasn’t yet said are part of this war. I don’t think they would want it. I don’t think Mr. Bush would dare ask it, actually. So it was a more total plunge in 1941 than anything that has happened in 2001. The suddenness, the surprise is greater, but the sense it’s a moment that’s going to last, that it’s going to change our history, change the nation’s history, change the history of the world is shared by both.”
Kareem Irfan
Chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago
“I can tell you from the perspective of the Muslim community that initial comparison definitely seems appropriate because there was akin to what happened after Pearl Harbor when in a wave of hysteria perceived concern about national safety in response to a war or related attack, a broad community of Japanese-Americans were painted with a wide brush of guilt by association and their significant civil and personal liberties were curtailed. The comparison is appropriate because a similar action seemed to be directed to Muslim-Americans and people of Arab-American background. Definitely there was a strong tendency, particularly in the media, to make the presumption that Islam as a whole is to blame, that Muslims as a whole subscribe to a violent ideology and hence all of them should be suspect to one degree or another. Definitely there was some eerie resonation of the aftermath of Pearl Harbor following the 9/11 tragedy.
“In the aftermath of Sept. 11, what has happened is the reaction of the government, especially President Bush and his immediate reports, they have gone out of the way to make it clear they will do everything possible to avoid Islam being targeted, Muslims being targeted as a whole.
“[At the time of Pearl Harbor] I don’t think there was such a rational and informed and tolerant and sensitive response by our government at that point of time, understandably because the whole nation of Japan was at war against us, so this could be construed as or was an act by one country against our nation. . . .
“In recent weeks, the concerns about a targeted investigation of Middle Eastern men, of focused racial profiling, that people with an apparently Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern background — those are significant concerns that again hearken back to the loss of civil liberties in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. So the similarities that seemed to have been dissipated by the government’s open action, they seem to be creeping back in and it’s very important as Americans we be mindful of our personal and individual liberties so we don’t go down the path, the slippery slope we went down after Pearl Harbor.”
Roy Chappell, 80
President of the Chicago chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black aviators who fought in World War II
“The first memory I had of Pearl Harbor was it was such an outstanding thing to happen. I came away with the thought I couldn’t imagine anything like this happening to the United States. . . . It took me by surprise. I had no idea something like this would happen. I had no idea what would happen next. At the time, I didn’t have any great desire to join the military and I didn’t think about it then. I was in school and trying to get through that.
“I think the one thing that happened on Sept. 11, it was critical. Everybody realized it was much closer to them than Pearl Harbor. When people heard about Pearl Harbor, most folks had no idea where Pearl Harbor was and what was going on and all of that, and it was almost halfway around the world. That was almost out of your particular way of thinking. But the one on Sept. 11 was on television and a large, large number of people saw that thing actually happening and it had a big impact on everyone. . . .
“The way people feel about it is quite different. I think you could find very few people during World War II that thought anything would happen to them in the United States. We’ve seen since Sept. 11 that people have the idea that something that can happen to them at any time.”
Bernie Sahlins
Theater director, author, one of the founders of The Second City
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think we felt the kind of personal vulnerability from the Pearl Harbor attack, which was remote, compared to the tower attack, which was something that could have happened to us immediately,” says Sahlins, who was a student at the University of Chicago at the time of Pearl Harbor. “Pearl Harbor was happening to armed forces people. Obviously, the tower attacks could have happened had we been working in Sears Tower or Hancock. It came home in a different way.”
Sherry Wynn
Sang with the Jimmy Joyce Orchestra during World War II
“As time went on [after the bombing], there were many changes. There were food stamps that we had to have. We could not buy certain things because there were shortages like sugar and butter. As far as [entertainers] were concerned, we were trying to do our best for the USO,” says Wynn, who used to sing at the USO on Randolph off Wabash when she was not performing at the Drake Hotel with the orchestra. “I would go there and greet them and sing. . . . At that time, a popular song [with the boys] was `We’re in the Money.’ And there was a song that was written especially for me called `Let’s Be True Americans.’ The lyrics went, `Let’s be true red, white, blue and Americans.’ . . . The USO did a marvelous job in that they brought the best out in people. . . . You could not do that in this day and age. It’s not organized the way it was before. You need a leader out there working and there is nobody like Bob Hope.
“We did the very best we could to make the people happy. That was what our main goal was — to help put people in a better mood. “The difference is, well, we are wealthier today. We were not that wealthy years ago. We were really struggling because of the war.”
Studs Terkel
Author, historian
“It’s a different world. You can’t compare the two. The analogy makes no sense. Then, there was the beginning of an actual world war. And Japan entered the war in bombing Pearl Harbor. And with it, of course, came the horrendous thing. . . . The one big blot was the internment of Japanese-Americans. The West Coast was full of anti-Japanese hysteria and so hundreds of thousands of good, hard-working Japanese-Americans were interned. Which is a shame and a blot. And I hope, you know, that at least we’re avoiding all that, [in] the attitude toward Muslim Americans. . . . That’s the similarity.
“To compare the two [otherwise] is ridiculous. It was a war then against fascism. And there were specifically three large countries involved: The axis powers: Gemany, Japan and Italy. Now you don’t have any one country. You have people going batty. It happens when there’s so much famine in the world and they see much richness here.
“Here’s my dream. Thanks to advances in agronomy, to feed, clothe and shelter every man, woman and child in the world. And we’re in a spot to help. That is not to say we’re not to get these baddy guys who did this. Of course we’ve got to get them. But getting them isn’t the answer.
“Getting at the root is the answer and the root is the sense of helplessness. . . . We have to think as we’ve never thought before. . . . Remember the Vietnam War, that little girl running. Napalm. Napalm. Well, that’s got to be our little girl from now on in. It’s one world. And not Third or Second or First. And this thing [Sept. 11] made us more vulnerable and perhaps more human too.”
Andrew Pickering
Professor and head of the sociology department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“The [United] States [was] a very kind of insular, inward looking place before Pearl Harbor. The war was happening in Europe, but a lot of people wanted to stay out of it. . . . There wasn’t much high-tech development going on in weaponry before World War II. There was very little federal support for scientific research of any kind. All the research was paid for by universities out of their operating budgets, very small budgets,” says Pickering, whose academic focus has been on society’s relationship to science and technology, as well as warfare and industry.
“Pearl Harbor was the absolute pivot. Everything kind of rotated and suddenly the federal government was putting tons of money into research, especially of the physical sciences. That kind of laid the basis for everything that happened after World War II right up to the present. . . . And somehow, what’s happened since Sept. 11 is kind of an echo of that,” he says, citing the increased interest in tapping academia for help on everything from stopping terrorists to stopping buildings from falling down.
Of the Sept. 11-Pearl Harbor comparison, Pickering says, “If you think about Pearl Harbor, we have to associate that with these enormous wars between nations [and] states that go back to Europe in the 19th Century and then you get World War I, World War II . . . the Korean, the Vietnam War. The question is, where does Sept. 11 fit into that? It doesn’t sound like a continuation of that series at all. The only connection is a violent surprise to the American people. But then you think about the so-called wars since Vietnam — Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War. What can you say about them? They’re nothing like the first series of events. They’re totally asymmetric. They involve the imposition of massive force with minimal risk on somebody who can’t fight back. You bomb people from high altitudes. . . . Computer-controlled and surveillance systems have all been developed to make it possible to fight this sort of asymmetric war.”
Franz Jackson
Jazz saxophonist
“Naturally, when the war came, I started wondering what I was going to do, but I was passed by [for military service]. Fortunately, I was a married man. I was playing my horn at the time and I figured the best thing that could happen was to go on playing my horn. The one big difference was that at that time, the economy went up. Now, it’s down. I have trouble finding work now, but back then it was a completely different story. I was working all the time. I had a seven-piece band in Chicago and got a girl singer — you couldn’t go out without a girl singer — and we went out with the USO for several tours in different places. The funniest one was in Alaska in the Aleutian Islands; we were way out on the tip and you could look out over the edge and see Russia.
“On Sept. 11, I was working a job down at Navy Pier at the time, and they practically kicked us out. It was dangerous to be going places, and [people] felt for what was going on. They thought the Wrigley Building could be a target.
“You don’t feel as close to something when it doesn’t happen in your country. But when it happens in your country, as it did in Pearl Harbor, it feels closer. That’s the way it was then, and that’s what’s similar now.”
Ann Barzel
Dance critic and historian
“Now, it’s let’s go and do everything. Then, the theaters weren’t as giddy as they are now,” says Barzel, who turns 96 next week and was teaching in the public schools at the time as well as writing for Dance magazine. “I think it was sadder then. We felt guilty if we did anything too much, too bright. . . . We were very much enemies of the Japanese. Now we’re trying to soften things. We’re trying to be so broadminded.”
Paul Bird
Chicago Historical Society
“[Just prior to Pearl Harbor] many were against any involvement in the war in Europe and, for many of us, there was a very strong feeling we were being dragged into the war,” says Bird, who was a senior at Oak Park High School at the time. “Then, when Pearl Harbor struck, when we heard the news the ships had been hit, that just changed everything.
“The next morning, we had an assembly mainly for the boys to hear President Roosevelt’s speech [when] he declared this would go down as a day in infamy. I still choke up about it. We all thought, here we were in our last year of high school and we thought this is it: Our plans of going to college, all these things, are going to be put on hold. Because the next thing [we thought] is we would all be going into the service one way or another. Then we said, this is something we’ve got to do.
“I think [the mood today] is much more different. We were hit here. Pearl Harbor? We looked at that, of course, [and thought] it was a military thing,” adds Bird, who was drafted in 1943, then stationed in North Africa.
“Today, there is much more feeling, more unification. You know what? If I would be called up, not that they’d want me, but I would go. I feel strongly about this now.”
1941
More Top Picks Dgt Vs Millennium Chess Computers
Dec. 7 A Japanese attack on U.S. military ships and installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii leaves 2,403 Americans dead.
Dec. 8 A declaration of war is issued against Japan by Congress following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech.
Dec. 22 President Roosevelt signs a new draft act requiring all males ages
18 to 65 to register for military service and all males 20 to 44 to be prepared for active duty.
1942
Jan. 2 The Office of Civilian Supply announces that all civilian car and truck production will cease for the duration of the war.
Jan. 6 In a State of the Union message, President Roosevelt asks for $56 billion to fight the war.
Jan. 30 The Emergency Price Control Act takes effect, placing ceilings on prices and rents.
Feb. 6 The U.S. War Department announces that Great Britain and the United States will combine their chiefs of staff to coordinate war efforts.
Feb. 19 President Roosevelt signs executive order 9066, ordering the removal of all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast and their relocation in internment camps.
2001
Sept. 11 Commercial airplanes hijacked by terrorists crash into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon, and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,500 people.
Sept. 13 President Bush declares the terrorist strikes “an act of war” and Congress passes a resolution giving him $20 billion in emergency funds for “necessary and appropriate force.”
Oct. 7 U.S. and British forces launch joint air and missile strikes against Afghanistan, the first in a series of long-anticipated assaults aimed at toppling the Taliban government and finding the Al Qaeda leadership.
Oct. 17 Bush declares “America will do whatever it takes to get our economy moving again.” Later he promotes an economic stimulus package, and leaders urge Americans to buy goods.
Oct. 26 President Bush signs legislation that expands police powers to track, investigate and detain for seven days anyone, particularly foreign visitors and immigrants, suspected of terrorist activity.
Nov. 14 President Bush signs an order paving the way for alleged terrorists to be tried by special military tribunals, potentially speeding up the trials and allowing them to be conducted in secrecy.
Dec. 3 Commerce Department reports a record 2.9 percent surge in consumer spending in October, following a 1.7 percent drop in September.