From Jennifer Harper in the Washington Times:
Nobody was ready for "healing" on December 7, 1942, and "closure" was the last thing anybody wanted.
America, on the first anniversary of that other date that lives in infamy - often the benchmark by which September 11 is judged - wanted blood and vengeance, without apology.
No flowers, no teddy bears, and no exploration of the national angst. No presidential admonitions to think of Shinto as a religion of peace, no appeals to understand the frustrations that drove the misunderstood Nazis to rape Poland and bomb London.
The front pages of the nation's newspapers were stuffed with news of war: a battle raging in Tunisia, the launch of the USS New Jersey at Philadelphia, and, on the front page of the old Evening Star, a single photographic reminder of the destroyed harbor at Honolulu. On an inside page, Pvt. Joe Lockhard, who had first spotted the incoming Japanese planes at a radar station above Honolulu, was the subject of a small item headlined: "Hero of Navy prefers to forget Pearl Harbor."
"We have to give our time to what's happening now," he said, "and wait for history to catch up with it, when the war is won."
That was the extent of the observance, aside from an account of an air-raid wardens' parade down Georgia Avenue, and the advertised pleas from clothiers and jewelry stores to "Remember Pearl Harbor" and to buy War Bonds, scrimp on gasoline ("Is this trip really necessary?") and save kitchen grease.
The Washington Post had no stories about the anniversary on its front page, though it recounted - like other papers around the country - neighborhood memorial services, blood drives, ladies' auxiliary luncheons and the hasty weddings of men in uniform and sweet-faced brides.
Grit and gravitas were the order of the day.
