For video of the flyover viewed from a CSULB parking lot along 7th St. adjacent to the VA Hospital, click below.

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The event was conducted by the non-profit Inland Empire Wing of the Commemorative Air Force that preserves and flies WWII aircraft.

In our view, events like this merit recalling why those planes first flew. Today's event caps the Memorial Day weekend ahead of the 76th anniversary of "D-Day," the June 6, 1944 Normandy landing that brought VE Day ("Victory in Europe day) on May 8, 1945. The 75th anniversary of that event just passed with comparatively little mention here.

After VE Day, WWII raged on in the Pacific until the imperial Japanese regime surrendered after two August atomic bombs. The formal ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay took place nearly exactly six years to the day from when Nazi tanks rolled into Poland, igniting WWII in Europe. That event demonstrated the failure of appeasement.

By December 1941, London was bombed day and night by German warplanes and rockets; German troops occupied Paris and weren't far from Moscow.

On December 7, 1941, imperial Japan, which had already engaged in warlike aggressions in Asia, attacked Pearl Harbor. Within days, the Hiterl's Third Reich declared war on the U.S.. Suddenly, despite widespread isolationist desires in the U.S. and FDR's 1940 campaign pledge not to become involved in foreign wars, the U.S. found itself in a fight for its survival.

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Earlier today, we saw families sometimes spanning three generations watching today's flyover of WWII aircraft. We wonder how many of those who now attend LUUSD and CUSLB are required to read and discuss William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It opens by quoting George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Those who survived the years when those planes first flew, and those who perished and we recall this Memorial Day, would likely recommend it.

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