On this date, at 7:55 a.m., Dec. 7, 1941, Imperial Japan launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Their goal was to keep the U.S. military from supporting American possessions like the Philippines and Guam or British outposts like Singapore and Hong Kong. Such territories Japan attacked within hours of striking Pearl Harbor, annexing them all as part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the misleading name Japan had given to its empire.

Hawaii had long served as a crucial refueling station for ships sailing from the west coast to East Asia. The naval base hosted the United States Pacific Fleet, including the eight battleships moored along Battleship Row, the name given to deepest part of the lagoon capable of docking America’s most powerful ships. Pearl Harbor’s most valuable targets were its aircraft carriers, which, thankfully, were on patrol and so avoided the damage wrought by Japanese planes and midget submarines. 

But not the battleships. The eight battleships docked at Battleship Row suffered some damage, with four sinking. One bomb hit the powder magazine of the USS Arizona and sunk the battleship, killing 1,177 crewmen. Of the four ships, three were later raised and repaired and returned to service in World War II. Only the USS Arizona remained, sunk, scuttled at the bottom of the lagoon, where it leaks oil to this day as though bleeding from an open wound. 

And, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor had the opposite effect of what the Japanese military command intended. Rather than “knocking out” the Americans, the sneak attack awakened America to the threat posed by Japanese and German aggression in the Pacific and Europe, respectively. From Dec. 7 onward, that day would “live in infamy,” to quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address before Congress, and the United States would stop at nothing to free the world from such tyranny. 

In that great struggle, the United States and our allies fought and destroyed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Not since the days of the Roman Republic and its wars against Carthage and Macedon had one power waged war on two fronts and come out victorious. The United States had long modeled itself on the Roman Republic, from our national emblem, the eagle, to the curious spelling of Capitol Hill, so named for one of Rome’s seven hills. For that nation to exceed the Roman Republic in arms, courage, and, frankly, the righteousness of the American cause would have made the Founding Fathers proud. 

Sadly, the significance of these events was not something I learned about in school. I learned facts about Pearl Harbor and World War II, but no one who had me as their captive audience rolled up their sleeve, Crispin’s Day–style, to show their scars. Nor did anyone tell of the feats done at Pointe du Hoc or Mount Suribachi, when an army of farm boys and city folk dared the most extraordinary feats of heroism, deeds rarely attempted before or since in the annals of anyone’s history. We have to fight hard to keep them alive in the public memory. 

For, all too often, the heroism of one generation provides the kind of security and prosperity that often spoils the following generation. The greatest generation inadvertently produced a generation of hippies and rebels who went to college and found themselves easy marks just as the “long march through the institutions” got underway. The problem — a loss of confidence in God, meaning, truth, America’s purpose and ideals, everything — grows worse each year, and the heroic deeds of our forebearers fade along with it into the background. Dec. 7 is seemingly no longer a day of “infamy” but instead one of ignorance, a day few remember with each passing year despite being one we ought to. After all, the sacrifices, casualties, and heroism foreshadowed the momentous days that followed until the war’s end in 1945. 

America’s best days may still lie ahead. Greatness is just a generation away from fruition, just as freedom is one generation away from extinction. But if not, it is fair to say that America peaked at the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima. If we claim that the very pinnacle of American civilization took place on June 6, 1944, or from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945, or any other date of World War II, when American servicemen gave their last full measure of devotion, we affirm the very best of the ideals of the United States. It was not the big man of history, Roosevelt and his Brain Trust, or some powerful new weapon that turned the tide of the war, but a teenager or a 20-something storming those beaches or scaling cliffs with knives in his teeth. The American experiment in self-government hinges on whether a free people may freely self-govern: They may succumb to the tyrannies that have consumed lesser republics, or they may rise above it all and leave the world far better off for the Americans that come after them. 

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a day that may live in infamy, but it set in motion events that would showcase the enduring legacy the United States has left on the world. More importantly, it is a legacy we ought to live up to.