Reply #9: I understand completely, but...

[Kutjara]

...I think it's hard to draw a direct comparison, because America won WWII and was riding the crest of a wave of victory. In that time, we were invincible and equal to any challenge. Pearl Harbor was certainly a wound on the public psyche, but it was the wound of a victorious soldier, not the wound of a beaten victim. Post-war politicians commemorated the suffering of the war in indirect terms (after all, Pearl Harbor was only one among many battles on the road to victory). In fact, expressly mentioning Pearl Harbor might have risked alienating veterans of Guadalcanal, Saipan, Okinawa, the Ardennes, Normandy, Tunisia and the rest. There were many symbols to choose from, not merely a single iconic moment.