Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Far worse than Pearl Harbor
By Steven Baker
Special to the Skiff

Second class motor machinist Lee Brown was sweeping for mines on an auxiliary ship when he looked a Japanese pilot in the eye as he flew over the channel at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941.

“He was peering out the cockpit,” said Brown, now a World War II veteran living in Nevada. “I could have hit him with a slingshot.”

The three planes that smashed into the World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon Tuesday were not as identifiable as the red circle of attacking planes at Pearl Harbor. TCU associate journalism professor Jack Raskopf was 15 years old at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. He said this incident is more of a hopeless situation because of the unknown aggressors.

“Pearl Harbor was a fixable problem,” said Raskopf, who joined the Navy in 1943. “And then the atomic bomb dropped and we were ecstatically happy. Now we don’t have a clear-cut enemy.”

History professor Mark Gilderhus said he didn’t know anything sensible to say after the attacks Tuesday.

“This is astounding and terrifying,” Gilderhus said. “One thing is obvious — our world has changed for the worse. We might have to give up some of our civil rights for security.”

Gilderhus said air travel or even driving between states could become much more restrictive.

Just last year 17 people were killed when the USS Cole was attacked on Oct. 12 in Yemen. Terrorists also attacked two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

“When we try to retaliate against terrorists there is an obvious enemy but there isn’t an obvious country,” Gilderhus said. “Traditional war methods become obsolete.”

Gilderhus said he remembers standing outside his childhood home in Minnesota with his father during blackouts in World War II. The blackouts were cautionary tactics used by the United States in case of bombing raids. They would look up at the sky for the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

“Today we have a whole array of weapons,” Gilderhus said. “One of the truly maddening things about terrorism is that all of us are vulnerable.”

Steven Baker
lastevas@aol.com
Copy Desk Chief Kristina Iodice contributed to this report.