Ehrlich on Washington column, December 9, 2001

с NEWS FROM Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Second Congressional District of Maryland 1407 York Rood, Suit* 304 Lutherville, M dryland 2 1 093 315 Cannon Нои» Office Building Woihinglon, D.C 20515 EHRLICH ON WASHINGTON Week of December 9, 200 1 By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. A Date Which Lives On In Infamy If you are member of the World War II generation, you likely will never forget where you were on December 7, 1 941 . If you were a Naval enlistee stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that day, you were the target of an unprecedented attack that left more than 2,400 Americans dead by day’s end. At 7:55 AM, PST, you were attacked by a force of 353 Japanese aircraft, which bombarded American air and naval forces, destroying 188 planes, damaging or sinking eight battleships, crippling the Pacific Fleet and sending America into war. Sixty years later, America has not forgotten the atrocities inflicted on its citizens that day, nor the impact it had on our nation’s history. For the next four years, Americans at home and abroad dedicated themselves to freedom’s defense. Tens of thousands of young patriots lined up at hastily-established Army, Navy, or Marine Corps recruiting depot. Still more patriots, particularly young women, ably filled the nation’s manufacturing plants, turning a once feeble economy into a powerful wartime engine. Of course, hundreds of thousands of Americans paid for democracy’s defense with their lives and limbs on battlefields in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe. Likewise, a new generation of Americans will never forget where they were on September 11, 2001 . I was at the White House with some of my colleagues in Congress when we were notified of the attacks in New York. I quickly returned to my office on Capitol Hill and turned on the TV just as Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon; major events have continued to unfold ever since. As I observed the 60lh Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor last Friday, I remembered the extraordinary measures that President Franklin Roosevelt took to protect American lives at home. One such measure was the use of military tribunals to try Japanese and German belligerents who committed wartime atrocities. In fact, President Abraham Lincoln instituted similar measures during the Civil War, as did President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.