In the US, the day that lives in infamy was December 7, a Sunday.

But in the Philippines, it was Monday December 8, a feast day of Mary, so like the US, many were at church when attacked.

Those who remember are now dying or dead; but Lolo, who was a child at the time, remembers that his family walked to their farm so that they would be safe...he carried his cousin and his mom the food. Luckily, the town was not bombed and they returned shortly later, and he remembers one Japanese soldier who befriended him and the other preteens. However, he also remembers when things got worse, and people were shot on the street outside his old home.

Sigh.

The feast day is a very "Catholic" one: The idea that Mary was born "without the stain of original sin". Translated this means she didn't have the inborn weakness to commit sin like the rest of fallen humanity. Protestants at this point hit the ceiling and claim Paul said "no one is without sin", but then babies and the retarded don't sin, so Paul's claim is not literally accurate.

Yet the Muslims have a parallel idea that Miryam “O Mary! Allah has chosen you and purified you and again he has chosen you above all women of all nations of the worlds” (Quran 3:42).

But the point for Catholics is that she is "full of God's grace", and that she was sinless because Jesus in the womb was God and man: and like the "ark of the covenant", only the purest and best could carry the presence of God inside herself. Get rid of Mary, and you ignore this paradox, either seeing Jesus as an ordinary man, or implying that he was mostly god, and didn't need something as messy as a human family to raise him when he was small and weak as a child.

Muslims see Mary and Jesus as prophets and holy saints: Iranian miniseries film on Saint Mary HERE.