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Photographer: Mike Wintermantel
Taken: May 14, 2014
Caption: America Enters The War
Additional Description: To discourage further aggression by Japan, the United States Pacific Fleet was assigned to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where it was attacked by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941. The date was famously described President Franklin Roosevelt as one "which will live in infamy." Prior to the attack, Americans were deeply divided regarding their country's stance on war that many viewed as "not our fight." Pearl Harbor removed those divisions in a single stroke. America would answer Japan in the Pacific and join the Allies in confronting the facist tide in Europe.

Recruiting offices were immediately overwhelmed with enlistments, and few volunteers had illusions regarding the character of the fight ahead. From its start, the conflict was marked by dimensions of barbarism not usually associated with civilized nations. Non-combatants were targeted to an alarming degree, often solely for their ethnicity. Jews and other minority populations were segregated and virtually enslaved, and their practice of cultural traditions was forbidden. Before the war's end, millions of their number would lose their lives to a policy so monstrous that a Polish officer coined a word to describe it. He called it genocide.

About to confront the dangers of a world gone apparently mad, one Pittsburgh recruit was asked his reason for enlisting. In simply replying that "I wanted to serve," Pittsburgh's John Vento gave voice to the spirit of an entire generation of Americans.
Submitted: May 14, 2014, by Mike Wintermantel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Database Locator Identification Number: p273310
File Size: 1.781 Megabytes

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