world war ii, well, their call to arms began here with the words remember pearl harbor. at events tomorrow, we expect 150 world war ii vets and 20 pearl harbor survivors like jack holder that arrived with a suitcase full of memories. the battle shape arizona just after the explosion that shattered the mighty giant. i remember it like it was yesterday. it s something that will never go away. jack holders remembers so these teens won t forget pearl harbor. he recounts sunday morning, december 7, 1941. he joins his squadron in a hanger on ford island. we all ran outside, seen the aircraft in the sky with the rising sun insignia. that explained it all. a wave of japanese bombers
days as an activist? both, as a matter of fact. i am an actor and an activist, as well. which is more important to you? acting is my passion, the theatre is my passion. but i was defined by my childhood imprisonment, and that has made me an activist in my adult life, so they re both equally important to me. you mentioned your childhood already, and i think we have to talk about it at the beginning because it is in so many ways extraordinary that, given what happened to you as a little boy, that you made it in america in the way you did because you, at the age of five, were defined as an enemy alien, somebody to be locked up. just explain to people exactly what happened. well, on december 7, 1941, japan bombed pearl harbor. the next morning, the president
that biden is hopeless, that the united states is out of the game. and it s dangerous, because you can imagine china making a grab at taywan. you can imagine the north korean dictatorship deciding to do something. the iranians have indicated they want to do war games in the gulf with both china and russia, which would be very dangerous for us. all these things are going on. you could also imagine putin deciding to do something very aggressive in ukraine. this is not just a 1-off brief moment in history. this is a man who has broken a sense of respect, a sense of reliability, which we built from pearl harbor day on on december 7, 1941. so we ve had that entire period where the world came to believe the united states kept its word, the united states was powerful, the united states had to be
that it started on december 7, 1941 and the next thing you know, our troops were climbing up, scaling the cliffs of normandy on june 6, 1944 and rolling into berlin in april of 45. it didn t work that way. 1942 was a terrible year for the united states. both in the pacific and in the atlantic campaigns, european campaigns. and that s when americans needed to be together and supporting each other and being shoulder to shoulder with each other. and that s something that we can t even do in the middle of a pandemic. and we can t do it because so many lies, so much disinformation is being spread by facebook. and yes, we ll say other social media platforms, too. but facebook predominantly has been really the greatest risk right now, i think, to getting
december 7, 1941 and like september 11, 2001 for that generation of americans. it was this sense that fortress america could not dwell unengaged from the world. and one of the things we have to remember about world war i is that the forces that shaped america s slow engagement in it are the forces of isolationism, they re the forces we re dealing with again today. woodrow wilson used the phrase america first in the period leading up to world war i and, you know, as churchill later said, you cannot be this strong and this important a country and be disengaged from its concerns.