Pearl Harbor Day Remembrance

How I came to doubt the official story.

(image adapted from book cover art by Dave Seeley - https://www.daveseeley.com/p356132756/h78e342a2#h78e342a2)

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. I was already aware of the date but reminded again by Cindy Sheehan’s article today in which she shared her “Retro reaction to Pearl Harbor Day.” I commented how my understanding of the event evolved over the years. That comment, which grew to several paragraphs in length, I deemed relevant enough to make into its own post.

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I'm 75 years old. Like you, Cindy, I went to Catholic school for 12 years and learned to love everything about God and country. Then, in the late sixties, I went to college at UC Berkeley. The various protests and brutal police suppression radicalized me. Still, I believed in some semblance of the basic goodness of our government. Since then, it's been decades of disappointment. There have been so many wars and government actions that I opposed.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks, I heard a caller on talk radio say that "maybe our own government was behind this?" The radio host swore and hung up on the guy. I, too, was incredulous that someone could suggest such a thing, killing thousands of our own citizens.

With the Iraq war of 2003 came the continuous bleat of "weapons of mass destruction." I started reading alternative media about these bogus claims. That led me "down a rabbit hole."

From 2003 to 2013, I followed many discussion groups and alternative news sources on what were called "conspiracy theories." I analyzed the arguments of the debunkers and then the debunkers of the debunkers. My own early idealistic upbringing would not let me accept the depth of treachery I discovered about false flags and other covert actions. After ten years of reading and research, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that many, perhaps most of these "conspiracy theories" had validity.

Ten years of study and I became absolutely convinced of the falsity of the 9/11 official narrative. Part way through those ten years, I read that the December 7th, 1941 "surprise attack" by Japan on Pearl Harbor was known about in advance and allowed to happen to galvanize public support for the war. With shock, I dismissed that possibility as a bridge too far, even as a 9/11 "truther." However, after a few more years of recognizing patterns of government malfeasance, it makes perfect sense to me that the Pearl Harbor attack was permitted with full foreknowledge to manipulate the American public.

(Side note: I learned that many warships were moved out of Pearl Harbor before the attack, leaving older ships and those awaiting repair to be bombed. My own father sailed out of Pearl Harbor on a troop transport bound for the South Seas on December 6th, 1941, ONE DAY before Pearl Harbor was bombed. That was just one more data point for me.)

My sense of betrayal at the depths of treachery by my/our "leaders" has left me with an embittered heartbreak that haunts me to this day. Such is my remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day, December 7th, 2024.

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I realized that my comment became a short history of my political “awakening” and underlying great sadness at the feeling of betrayal.