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Geopolitics

Spotlight: 75 Years After Pearl Harbor

Erika Banoun

U.S.-Japanese relations over the past 75 years is one of history's great tales of decimation and reconciliation. Japan's massive surprise attack on the Hawaiian naval base on Dec. 7, 1941, which led to the American entry in World War II, was at the time unprecedented in the efficiency of its destructive powers. On the "day which will live in infamy," 75 years ago, Japanese air bombers managed to kill more than 2,400 people and virtually wipe out the U.S. fleet in the Pacific in little more than two hours.

Of course, Pearl Harbor is bookended by the far more "efficient" attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended the war with more than 100,000 dead in two successive instants.

The surrender and subsequent American occupation of Japan, along with massive U.S. investment in rebuilding the Asian island nation, would pave the way for an alliance of enormous economic prosperity. The latter was on full display with the news, touted by President-elect Donald Trump, that Japanese tech giant SoftBank had agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S., with the goal to create 50,000 new jobs.

But today's anniversary, and all the blood that was shed during the War, is a reminder that prosperity is ultimately most important as a tool for peace. In May, U.S. President Barack Obama visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the first sitting American President to visit the site commemorating the atomic bombings of 1945. This week came the news that, later this month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will become the first Japanese leader to visit Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941 may indeed live in infamy, but the day has the power to take on other meanings too.

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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