Thanks for posting.
...it was on a Sunday morning too....my Dad’s reserve unit had already been called up so he was in uniform....he told my Mother something to the effect...”don’t worry, this will be over quickly....a little island country like that won’t be much trouble to defeat”.....famous last words on his part!!....he didn’t come home til March of ‘1946 because his outfit was also part of the army of occupation.
....please share with us your family’s stories regarding this Day of Infamy...it will be a way of keeping this day alive....thank you.
Yes, thanks for posting. God bless my Father and Father-in-Law for their service in the South Pacific.
The next day, President Roosevelt called the attack on Pearl Harbor “a day that will live in infamy” and America declared war on Japan ending its policy of isolationism.
Pearl Harbor also united an outraged American nation behind President Roosevelt and behind the war against Japan, and failed to destroy the major US ships , the aircraft carriers.
Remembrance Day bump!
Thanks for posting this. I was a year old at the time of Pearl Harbor but before the war was over I have memories of certain aspects of it.
Today, extremists attacked a US military facility in the formerly autonomous Hawaiian Islands. US Navy personnel, some on their second and third tours of duty, were caught by surprise due to failures of both processes and technology.
Congressional hearings into the military failures which caused this tragedy will be held soon, with Republican members of the House and Senate in the hot seat.
The State Department is downplaying any nationalistic source of the attacks, saying there is no evidence that the emperor and the military forces of any particular nation are behind the attacks. A strong warning has been issued to Zionists to not use this event as a opportunity to establish a nation.
I was at Pearl for the 50 anniversary of the attack.Very,very moving.We were recovering a P-40B wreck that had been at Hickam field during the attack.That bird has been restored now and is flying in England.
Do we have the manufacturing and national mental capacity to follow through an ensuing attack and the likely war if that kind of attack happened today?
The rage of 9/11 seemed to wane after a couple of years.
Is it because no particular national force could be associated with the attack on civilians? Or is it because people are conditioned that it is unacceptable to “hate” anyone regardless of their antagonistic ways?
Thanks for posting this rememberance. Our nation has a lot of soul searching if we are to continue resisting tyranny.
Blackie was much older than I in 1941 and had already placed his order for his current 2003 450 HP Ford pickup. I think that's what he told us...
Today is also Civil Defense Day, as proclaimed by President Eisenhower in 1958. Civil Defense Day was intended to raise public awareness about bomb shelters and other passive defenses available should the US be attacked, and to educate the public as to how to cope with an attack. December 7 often featured “open house” at civil defense facilities as well as public displays of anti-aircraft missiles and other defense weapons.
Following the election of John F. Kennedy, the government apparently lost interest in promoting Civil Defense Day.
Let’s hope the MSM gives today as much coverage as the Hiroshima bombing anniversary. (Yeah, I know, I know.)
A long but good read is “Long Day’s Journey Into War” by Stanley Weintraub. He took events of that day from all over the world, hour-by-hour right, then the day after, and as a nice payback, a few survival stories from those at Hiroshima.
As you read the unfolding events, 20-20 hindsight makes it clear (you want to yell out “LOOK, DAMMIT! THEY’RE COMING!) that we were going to be hit, although you can see why our mindset blinded us into thinking it would be Malaya and the Philippines.
As a sidebar, you can’t help but wonder if Somebody Upstairs wasn’t tweaking the dials to make this event happen no matter how many omens there were. In a perverse way, if we had to suffer this attack, it was the best of bad luck. Given that the attack was inevitable, consider:
1) If the embassay Japs had translated the message in time, we would have been informed of the attack before it happened and the “Sneak Attack” slogan would have been nullified and perhaps the country wouldn’t have been as outraged and unified.
2) They sank our ships in shallow water. Within six months, with the exception of two, all battleships were raised and ended up modernized and taking part in the war. Had the fleet been at the alternative anchorage it would have been in much deeper water and harder to salvage.
3) Had we been alerted “just in time”, the fleet would have gotten out and been in REALLY deep water, and most probabably overwhelmed and sunk (think Prince of Wales and Hood), precluding any salvage attempts.
A terrible day no matter how you slice it though, and it does call for a moment of silence and thanks. Yamamoto’s apocryphal comment that they had “awakened a giant and filled him with a terrible resolve” was another way of saying “Don’t p!$$ off the Americans.” Would that the world today still had that fear.
What’s interesting is what would we have done had not Hitler declared war on us? As a matter of fact, Hitler had to be persuaded by the Japanese to declare war on the US after the Japanese promised Hitler help against the Soviets, which of course was a promise the Japanese had no intention of honoring.
He said that he opened fire with the .50 simultaneously with several other guns in the harbor. The Japs made their turns very low over the Phoenix so it received very little damage but shot down at least two planes.
Dad said a cook came on deck to see what was going on. The cook was carrying potatoes in his apron and the Japs were flying so low that the cook started throwing potatoes at them.
As the Japs turned, very low, right over head, Dad said he looked right into the pilots eyes as he fired on them. He said that many were grinning and looked very confident.
ping.
To read in a little while.
Thank you.
Struck with the nation-wide flurry of patriotism after the attack,
my dad tried to join the army and then the navy
but was turned down by both because of his poor eyesight.
He turned to and joined the merchant marines finally arriving at Pearl Harbor
the following spring (1942) and was based from there for a year while
ferrying troops, goods, and munitions from San Francisco to Pearl,
and then all over the Pacific. I wish I could still remember just half
of the stories he told me. His travels took him all over the Pacific
to the Solomans (Guadal Canal) and to the Phillipines.
He did a second tour (1943) in the Atlantic shipping based out of New York
travelling to Liverpool and to Ghent.
He served a third year (1944) back in the Pacific again.
All of this from a 21 year raised dirt poor in rural Georgia who had
never so much as seen the ocean until he was put onboard a liberty ship.
But, yet, all of his life, Dad never felt like he did enough.
Both of his brothers (my uncles) were in regular service (1 army, 1 navy).
What a generation that was.
I fear that “we” would never be able to mount or support such an effort.