Despite overwhelming odds

Julia ♦ December 7, 2020 ♦ 4 Comments

Drew and Jeff view the remains of the Arizona’s gun turret #3.
At the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 1991

“We salute the veterans and survivors of Pearl Harbor who inspire us still.  Despite overwhelming odds, they fought back heroically, inspiring our nation and putting us on the path to victory.  They are members of that Greatest Generation who overcame the Depression, crossed oceans and stormed the beaches to defeat fascism, and turned adversaries into our closest allies…They remind us that no challenge is too great when Americans stand as one.  All of us owe these men and women a profound debt of gratitude for the freedoms and standard of living we enjoy today.”
— President Barack Obama

Jeff has very little to say about my blog, other than protesting when I tell him I’ve posted photo of him, or written about him.  However, I did read to him the blog I posted a couple of days ago, in which I talked about the parallels between fighting a war and fighting cancer.  A few minutes later, he told me about The Ballad of Ira Hayes, a Johnny Cash song he remembered with some emotion in connection with the mention of Iwo Jima.  I told him I could feature the song on my blog for Pearl Harbor Day, but he asked me instead to use the track below,  a poem recorded by Johnny Cash.

Jeff isn’t nearly as fond of music as I am, but he does like Johnny Cash quite a bit, so I agreed to include this recitation as he suggested.  At the time, I didn’t remember that one year ago today, I had chosen to feature one of my own Cash favorites.  On this day of remembrance, the words of the Man in Black seem fitting again.  I hope we will all continue to be inspired by the courage of those who stand firm in the face of overwhelming odds.

This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.