Pearl Harbor

Washington -- We Americans love a parade, a paid holiday and any historical reason to engage in self-flagellation and general stupidity. A case in point has been the observances of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.I can't for the life of me discover any positive benefits from regurgitating memories of that perfidious episode in world affairs. Not any more than I want to a join a parade four years from now either protesting or celebrating the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Honolulu -- They are determined to maintain the dignity, the solemnity of the event. To inadvertently use the word "celebration" when referring to the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is to invite rebuke.Round-number birthdays and anniversaries often receive special notice. Few will be as widely or as somberly observed as the 50th anniversary of Dec. 7, 1941, that "day which will live in infamy," in the grim words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the first week of December, President Bush, thousands of survivors of the attack and many relatives of those who died that day will attend a series of ceremonies centered around the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Fifty years ago this weekend -- Saturday, Dec. 6, 1941 (stock markets were open Saturday mornings until 1954) -- the Dow Jones average closed at 116.60, but the day after Pearl Harbor the DJ dropped 4 points, or 3 1/2 percent, equal to 102 points at today's level. Yesterday the Dow closed at 2,911.67, roughly 2,500 percent above its Pearl Harbor week level.,3 LOOKING BACK: New York and Baltimore newspapers (3 cents daily, 10 cents Sunday) of the Dec. 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor week show: Men's ties at Bloomingdale's, 69 cents (3 for $2)

Washington. -- In the hectic year of 1974, when Ted Agnew was out but Dick Nixon was still in, the venerable Gridiron Club of Washington satirized the domestic climate of the time with words sung to the tune of "America the Beautiful":Oh beautiful for Tel & Tel,Du Pont and Sperry Rand,For U.S. Steel and HoneywellAnd Continental Can;American Cyanamid,Three-M and A&PAnd Standard Brands and Ho-Jo standsFrom sea to shining sea!The kicker paid tribute to the man of the hour, whom everyone suspected would be president soon:Americard and Diner's Club,Sears and Montgomery Ward,And Pontiac and CadillacAnd good old Jerry Ford!

WASHINGTON -- The 56th anniversary of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a grim reminder of the havoc that the ruthless leader of an aggressor nation can wreak upon innocent victims.That attack, ordered by Japan's Premier Hideki Tojo, catapulted the United States into history's most devastating war, a two-ocean conflict that put this nation's genius and courage to their greatest test.When it ended nearly four years later, the human toll for America had been more than 400,000 killed and nearly 700,000 wounded.

The Senator Theatre is playing Pearl Harbor after all. Just two months after moving heaven and Earth in an unsuccessful attempt to get the presumed summer blockbuster to open in his theater, Senator owner Tom Kiefaber finally has gotten the film's distributors to see the light. The engagement began yesterday, and will last for at least a week, depending on the size of the audience the film attracts. The next film booked for the art deco movie palace at York Road and Belvedere Avenue is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux, scheduled to open Aug. 10. "All along, people have been calling me, asking, `When are you going to get Pearl Harbor?

Last month, PBS got the drop on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus setting foot on the Americas with a six-hour production. Tonight, public stations help begin next month's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."

On the day before Thanksgiving, Capt. Thomas K. Kimmel, U.S.N. Ret., of Annapolis, received a letter from Richard G. Trefry, the military assistant to President Bush. It said the president would not posthumously promote Mr. Kimmel's father from rear admiral to admiral. Admiral was the rank the late Husband E. Kimmel held on a temporary commission on Dec. 7, 1941. He was then commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor. He and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Army commander there, were blamed for the infamous tragedy of that day. In a rush to judgment, a special commission headed by the chief justice of the United States said in January 1942 that the two officers had been guilty of "dereliction of duty" for not thwarting the Japanese attack.