Posted on 12/07/2003 11:35:18 AM PST by yonif
Dec. 6, 1941: Washington D.C. - U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt makes a final appeal to the Emperor of Japan for peace. There is no reply. Late this same day, U.S. codebreakers begin intercepting a 14-part message from the Japanese, leaving American leadership with little doubt that an attack is imminent somewhere in southern Asia.
Meanwhile in Portsmouth and Norfolk, thousands of military men and women and their civilian counterparts are commuting to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Naval Base. Civilians across Hampton Roads are teamed with Navy personnel, working overtime and are divided into "swing shifts" to continue the around-the-clock work on finishing the 680-foot, 35,000-ton battleship Alabama.
Dec. 7, 1941
9 a.m. in Washington, D.C.: The last part of the Japanese message, stating that diplomatic relations with the U.S. are to be severed, reaches Washington in the morning and is decoded. At 9:30 a.m., another message is intercepted which instructs the Japanese embassy to deliver the main message to the Americans at 1 p.m. The Americans realize the time of the Japanese message corresponds with early morning in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The U.S. War Department then sends out an alert but uses commercial telegraph because radio contact with Hawaii is broken. Delays result in the alert arriving at Oahu, Hawaii around noontime in the islands.
Navy officials in Hampton Roads are alerted, which surprise few since Roosevelt's visit several months before the war to "get Norfolk ready."
6 a.m. in Hawaii: 230 miles north of Oahu, Admiral Nagumo, commander of a Japanese attack force consisting of six aircraft carriers with 433 planes, gives the order for the first wave of 183 planes to take off. Five Japanese midget submarines also have been deployed around local waters off Pearl Harbor. (Originally, it was thought that the submarines did no damage during the attack, but modern photographic analysis confirms a submarine snorkel breaking the surface and a telltale sign of a torpedo on the way from a submarine toward U.S. vessels).
7:02 a.m.: At Oahu's northern shore radar station, two Army operators detect unidentified aircraft approaching. They contact a junior officer who disregards the report, assuming that the radar has spotted American B-17 bombers, which are expected in from the U.S. West Coast.
7:15 a.m.: The Japanese launch a second wave directed at Pearl Harbor, consisting of 167 more planes. At this point, Pearl Harbor is basking in a pleasant and sunny Sunday morning. Senior military officials have concluded there is no reason to believe an attack is imminent. Anti-aircraft positions are unmanned, ammunition is stored, torpedo nets are not set, and U.S. aircraft are parked securely wingtip to wingtip.
7:53 a.m.: Just as the United States Navy's battleship row comes into range, Japanese flight commander Mitsuo Fuchida yells the battle cry, "Tora! Tora! Tora! (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!)" For the Americans below him, they will experience nearly two hours of non- stop hell.
9:45 a.m.: When the Japanese planes finally withdraw, they leave behind 2,335 U.S. servicemen dead, and another 1,178 wounded. Among the casualties are 68 civilians killed. Eight battleships are damaged, with five sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers, and three smaller vessels are lost along with 188 aircraft. The Japanese lose 27 planes and five midget subs.
The word of the attack reaches Washington and then reverberates down the coast to Hampton Roads like a gunshot. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard duty office gets the message and records in the logbook.
Dec. 8, 1941
When the early morning shift arrives at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, their fellow workers getting off the "graveyard shift" greet them with a somber silence. Marines with armed weapons are posted at the gates. Navy anti-aircraft teams and watch standers are hurriedly installing positions above the shipyard's principle shops and buildings.
Veterans remember the day as if a huge cast of gray had descended over Hampton Roads. The attack on Pearl Harbor had hit home hard, as many had worked on the battleships Nevada, which was beached during the attack, and Arizona, which lost over 1,104 men when the magazine exploded after being hit by a 1,760-pound air bomb. Among the burned, twisted and broken ships of Pearl Harbor was the Norfolk Naval Shipyard-built destroyer Downes that had been sunk while in drydock.
Although the Japanese had won a stunning tactical victory, the prize targets of their attack, the aircraft carriers Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga were at sea. The Japanese also had failed to destroy valuable base fuel tanks as well.
In his Declaration of War message against Japan before Congress, Roosevelt called the Dec. 7 attack, "a date which will live in infamy."
Indeed it did, as "Remember Pearl Harbor," became a battle cry that woke the so-called "sleeping giant" of America's industrial and military might - the likes of which the world had never seen. Nowhere was that evidenced more than in Norfolk and Portsmouth, where the naval station and shipyard were transformed into beehives of production.
From the beginning of World War II the surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard repaired, altered or converted 6,850 vessels. Many of these would use the naval station as home port for training and supplies. At the same time, 101 new ships and landing craft were built as the yard's workforce went to a record 42,893 in February 1943. Among the 30 major new warships built, the yard launched the battleship Alabama and three aircraft carriers, the Shangri-La, Lake Champlain and Tarawa.
The effect of Pearl Harbor on the civilian community was dramatic as well
Because of the war, and the huge surge of workers moving into the area, the federal government supplemented the construction of over 45 public and private war-housing projects, totaling more than 16,487 units. To get the civilian and Navy workforce to their work and duty stations, Hampton Roads saw over a dozen new ferry routes established, including longer runs to the Peninsula. The new ferry routes were supported by satellite parking and additional bus routes since fuel was heavily rationed. To stretch the buying power of food ration stamp books, "Victory gardens" sprung up throughout Tidewater.
To this day, adjacent to the shipyard commander's office, the logbook noting the attack on Pearl Harbor remains open for all to see. Nothing in the 20th century was so defining a moment for our community and nation as the date Dec. 7, 1941.
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