Fifty years ago next Saturday, Japanese carrier planes slipped over the mountains of Oahu to catch the pride of the American fleet dozing along Battleship Row. Since then, the world has never been the same -- but it is different today in ways that few of the pilots, sailors or embarrassed politicians of 1941 could have imagined when Pearl Harbor was aflame.
That Sunday morning, Japanese prestige soared in the world, and America's image had never seemed more hollow. Less than four years later, after Hiroshima, those positions were reversed.