On December 7, 1942, nobody was talking about “closure.”

America, on the first anniversary of that other date that lives in infamy — often the benchmark by which September 11 is judged — wanted blood and vengeance, without apology.

No flowers, no teddy bears, and no exploration of the national angst. No presidential admonitions to think of Shinto as a religion of peace, no appeals to understand the frustrations that drove the misunderstood Nazis to rape Poland and bomb London.

The front pages of the nation’s newspapers were stuffed with news of war: a battle raging in Tunisia, the launch of the USS New Jersey at Philadelphia, and, on the front page of the old Evening Star, a single photographic reminder of the destroyed harbor at Honolulu. On an inside page, Pvt. Joe Lockhard, who had first spotted the incoming Japanese planes at a radar station above Honolulu, was the subject of a small item headlined: “Hero of Navy prefers to forget Pearl Harbor.”

“We have to give our time to what’s happening now,” he said, “and wait for history to catch up with it, when the war is won.”