When I think of Pearl Harbor I remember the plumeria petals that one of the other visitors had tossed over the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial mixing in with the bright colors of the oil that still leaks out of the ship.
I think the thing that suprised me the most were all the Japanese tourists who were there. The official tour is actually done in English & Japanese and is incredibly sad as they relive the awful events. I remember asking John, "Don't you think they'd be ashamed to come?" I felt like this was OUR sorrow...I just hadn't stopped to think how many different people groups "our" actually encompassed.
One more thing to stretch my view of the world. Little did I know that eight months later I would go to work for a company owned by the Japanese government. Post-September 11th, I think so differently because how can you hold an entire country responsible for the bad decisions some of its members made? Those days are over, right?
Then I had to laugh at myself and remember that there has just been a shift and now the world has a new bad guy to hate. Pastor Greg @ Seacoast used to always say, "There is someone annoying in every small group. If you are listening to this thinking, 'Wow, I must be really lucky because everyone in our group is really great,' then the annoying person is YOU." How could I forget what I hear on the BBC every morning? We're reviled. :)
National Geographic has a great interactive timeline video attack map.
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