Day of Infamy

"I'll take this.", I said to the lady at the bookstore. I was buying a guide on local edible plants. She ran my debit card and looked at the receipt.
"Let's see...what's the date today?", she said. "Uhhh December 7th. Oh yeah -Pearl Harbor Day."
The woman chuckled and said something about not remembering these things.
It didn't seem particularly infamous from my perspective. I looked at the manual I'd just bought. It had Japanese translations. Outside, some fobby looking tourists were hanging out and talking to each other in rapid-fire Japanese. Down the street, the flag was flying at half mast.