Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 112 Part 5.djvu/953

 PROCLAMATION 7058—DEC. 5, 1997 112 STAT. 3711 and to help teach our young people about the importance and the benefits of safe driving behavior. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of December, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety- seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-second. WILLIAM J. CLINTON Proclamation 7058 of December 5, 1997 National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 1997 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation December 7, 1941, marked a turning point in the history of our Nation, a defining moment that would alter the lives of millions of Americans and change forever America's destiny. On that quiet Simday morning, the forces of Imperial Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing or injuring more than 3^000 Americans, crippling our Pacific Fleet, and critically damaging our airpower. In that moment of supreme crisis, the essential greatness at the ccH-e of the American spirit was revealed. Our response was not despair, but determination. Inspired by the leadership of Presid^it Franklin Roosevelt and buoyed by his faith that we ultimately would prevail, America went to war. Looking back across the years, we rightly are still awed by what the American people accomplished diuing World War n. United in spirit and purpose after the attack on Pearl Harbor, millions of men and women joined the Armed Forces; by war's end, some 15 million had served. They fought fiercely and with uncommon courage in battlefields across the globe. In the Pacific, step by bloody and pednstaking step, they took back the islands captured by Imperial Japanese forces in the days after Pearl Harbor. The names of those battles still resonate through die years: Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima. On the western front, facing the daunting power of the Nazi war machine, Americans and our AlUes struggled and died to liberate Europe, fighting in the stormy North Atlantic, in the searing heat of North Africa, and in the flak-filled skies over France and Germany. Americans on the home front responded with equal gallantry and strength. Stepping forward to close the gap left by depeirting servicemen, the very young, the elderly, minority workers, and women filled America's factories and shipyards. Working aroimd the clock, they built the ships, planes, tanks, and guns that armed the forces of freedom and made our Nation the "Arsenal of Democracy." In fields, on farms, and in neighborhood Victory Gardens, they produced the food to sustain our Nation, our troops, and our Allies. Millions left their homes to do their part, and few American families were untouched by the hardships and sacrifices demanded by this unprecedented effort. While more than half a century separates us from the attack on Pearl Harbor, we still can learn much from the example, achievements, and heroic deeds of those Americans who preserved the fiame of liberty and passed it around the world. They taught us that America is the

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