Remembering June 4 and 6 and the Greatest Generation
Until the print media and TV industry realizes the historic significance of June 4, 1942, and June 6, 1944, our youth are destined to repeat our ancestors’ mistakes and missteps.
During the weekend of June 4, I saw no major article nor a movie on free or cable TV detailing the turning point of World War II in the Pacific or European theater.
The Battle of Midway turned the tide against the Japanese Imperial Navy exactly 75 years ago June 4. Had Admiral Chester W. Nimitz not turned the USS Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet aircraft carriers into a dive-bombing juggernaut, destroying four of the five Japanese carriers, we would have lost the Midway Islands and given our enemy a stopover set of islands to dominate the oriental rim of the world and likely invade the United States.
Likewise, had the Allied invasion of Europe at the beaches of Normandy on June 6 not been successful under Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower, Europe would have fallen to the Nazis of Germany and life in Europe and the U.S. would be much different than we have it to today.
We show Pearl Harbor movies on Dec. 7 and stories of Jesus’s life at Christmas and Easter. It’s high time we teach our youth the significance of June 4 and June 6 in a World War where all the Americans, British, Russians, French, Poles and many underground citizens came together to defeat the evil war machines of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Patriotic print articles and movies like “Midway” and “The Longest Day,” shown each year on June 4 and June 6 respectively, reinforce to our youth to learn from all their grandparents’ sacrifices to defeat evil whenever it rears its ugly head.
If the youth of today are not taught that history tends to repeat itself under a different name of evil, like Islamic terror, then today’s youth will suffer far more casualties than the complacent and greatly fooled generations of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
May strength and prayers be given to our youth to fight this evil together and not let the media divide them away from each other. We are all Americans. Not hyphenated-Americans.
We need to come back together as a nation like we did the day after 9/11. God bless this great country and our leaders. And Happy Father’s Day to the greatest generation of dads. It’s a much safer world because of them.
Ike Lawrence of Lexington is a military historian and past national director of U.S. Navy League.
This story was originally published June 16, 2017 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Remembering June 4 and 6 and the Greatest Generation."