Pearl Harbor show celebrates national pride

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November 18, 2009

By Karen Middleton The News Courier Wed Nov 18, 2009, 06:23 PM CST

ATHENS — Those of us involved in presenting the Pearl Harbor Day tribute, “We interrupt this program…” are getting excited about this show, which will be at 2 p.m. Dec. 6 at the Athens Senior Center.

I don’t know what it is about the World War II era that brings out this nostalgia. I guess because, at least for me, it’s a time that seems we knew the good guys from the bad.

It was an era when people didn’t spend a lot of time floundering around in gray areas.

In the weeks and months following 9/11, the nation experienced a resurgence of the patriotism, commitment and dedication displayed by our stalwart parents and grandparents during WWII.

Flag sales were at an all-time high. We came out of our shells and actually talked to strangers about this common experience of being attacked on our own shores. Strangers were no longer strangers but rather part of the big “Us” allied against “Them” — Osama bin Laden and his radical followers.

But as the seemingly open-ended War on Terror drags on, now in its eighth year and Osama still on the run, we have lost our cohesiveness as a nation.

Maybe that’s why we tend to romanticize the days of WWII when the good guys came to the rescue and set the world right.

But those still around who lived through WWII can attest that there was nothing romantic about those days of rationing, sacrifice, deprivation and wrenching heartbreak.

Also in 20-20 hindsight, we know that there were a lot of gray areas in WWII swept aside in the immediacy of the moment when survival depended on an unwavering focus on the bad guys.

For instance, in researching a script for “We interrupt this program…” I found that the infamous Tokyo Rose was not a single person, but rather the name GIs gave the faceless female voice that broadcast Japanese propaganda to Marines and B-29 pilots in the South Pacific.

We now know there were no fewer than a half-dozen female Japanese propaganda broadcasters, but their names are lost to history.

Iva Tokuri was branded “Tokyo Rose,” although she used the on-air name of “Orphan Annie” and went on trial for treason and served time in prison after the War. Iva was a second-generation Japanese American. She had visited an ailing relative in Japan shortly before the Pearl Harbor bombing and became stranded there, where she was forced by the Japanese propaganda agency into her role.

Iva survived.

Meanwhile, the U.S. forced her family out of their home and into a containment camp along with other Japanese Americans, many of whom had sent sons to fight in the armed forces against the Japanese. This is one of those gray areas for which Americans will always feel shame.

As one of his final acts before leaving office President Gerald Ford pardoned Iva Tokuri in 1977.

But getting back to “We interrupt this program….” This is shaping up to be a great afternoon of entertainment. Tickets at $5 each are on sale at the Athens Senior Center and the Alabama Veterans Museum and Archives.

Proceeds go to the museum, which has as its mission to honor service men and women from the Revolutionary War through the present War on Terror and to educate our young about the high cost of freedom. There are no gray areas about that.

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Karen Middleton

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