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Pearl Harbor DayBy lex, on December 7th, 2010
31 comments to Pearl Harbor Day |
Targets of Opportunityblog advertising is good for you Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Amazon AssociateFor the Effort!Winnar! Subscribe CategoriesPagesTagsacademy
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But don’t you know that WE are the bad guys in that? We threatened the Greater East Asian CoProsperity Sphere by cutting of vital raw materials for the Imperial Japanese war machine. We wanted to deny Japan her right to invade and subjugate China and Korea. So what else could Japan do?
Or so the revisionists will say.
Also the 16th anniversary of my families move to Idaho.
I saw a picture once of Eleanor Roosevelt at the “Date which shall live in infamy” speech. She had the worst seat in the house, leaning way out trying to see around a column.
Lex, no way I forget. My Dad was there. His shipped tied up at Ford Island, next to the Utah. His duty station was the crowsnest to keep all the communications stuff up there ok. He saw the Arizona go up. He remembered looking into the eyes of a Japaneese pilot. He passed March 07, but I remember for him.
Here’s to our dads! Mine joined the Navy one month after Pearl.
And mine, when he graduated high school in 1943. He spent most of his service time as a corpsman at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital.
[...] Lex, CDR Salamander, and the excellent US Naval Institute Blog all have worthy posts. [...]
It’s already getting to be “just another day” for most of the US–the land of terminal amnesia–except for the memory of Harriet Tubman–who’s already better known by grade schoolers than George Washington. PC NEVER dies…
Why, VX? Because PC is ALL that’s LEFT?
that’s part of it. Another very big part is that it’s too big for the small minds of most people to encompass something on the scale of WW2, combined with the fact that Japan has always been just a source of nifty electronics gadgets and tasty but somewhat weird food for the majority of people alive today.
It’s a long way from their daily routine, far from their beds.
WW2 in Europe is a lot closer to home for Europeans than WW2 anywhere is for Americans.
On the way to work I could (until recently, I switched jobs and now drive a different route) see the bunkers used to defend my country against the German invasion in 1940. There’s a large war cemetary not 10 minutes’ driving from where I used to live as a kid, and even in the 1970s we sometimes found used shellcasings in the forests from the fighting in WW2.
There were celebrations every year of the end of WW2, complete with parades of restored WW2 era vehicles. There’s still a rememberance ceremony every year on 4 May to honour the war dead (though the PC crowd has been corrupting it for some years now to include the dead of other wars as well, it’s still held at the WW2 memorial in Amsterdam and a mass execution site near the Hague).
The country is littered with small WW2 memorials and museums.
Things like that keep the history alive. The US doesn’t have that, certainly not in the density it exists in Europe. And that’s why in the US the memory is fading a lot quicker than it is over here.
THANK GOD OUR CARRIERS WEREN’T IN PORT
WOULD’VE TAKEN A LOT LONGER TO WIN THAT WAR
TOM HANKS CAN KISS MY ELBOW
Yes, thank God for that…also, thank Roosevelt and his co-conspirators:
1) 9:30 AM (Washington time), 26 Nov 1941. German radiotelephone intercept station on the Dutch coast picks up and descrambles a conversation between FDR and Churchill about upcoming Japanese attack on Pearl. Documents and discussion in Gregory Douglas GESTAPO CHIEF: THE 1948 OSS INTERROGRATION OF HEINRICH MUELLER (San Jose, 1995), Vol. I, pp. 42-55, 246-54. Brits cracked Jap naval code.
2) About 11 hours later, Adm. Stark cut preliminary orders to Kimmel: “send air reinforcements to Midway and Wake…use the carriers.”
I honor our fighting men, living and dead. Never the politicians.
Have a nice day.
You can thank Nagumo for not hitting the tank farm, after being advised to do so, or hunting the carriers. Both decisions are incomprehensible and we can be grateful for them.
I practiced law in San Diego with a gentleman who was XO on the Louisville at Surigao Strait; and in Los Angeles with a gentleman who was a junior officer on the second Monssen in one of the destroyer squadrons at Surigao. There were others–a high school teacher who was at Peleliu, a friend who was in the Marine Corps at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima; and for an added bonus as a USMC reservist got a winter trip to Chosen Reservoir–and back. Other older friends had their stories to tell about war in the Pacific.
When I cross the Golden Gate Bridge, I tend to think about the guys who sailed out under the bridge in ’42–and never came back. It was a different time in our history.
+1
“It was a different time in our history.”
There’s truth there and perhaps there’s the notion that the people were different as well. Our persona as a nation has been gutted by political correctness (cultural marxism). There’s been at least three generations since Dewey and his ilk took over education.
Two uncles tried to enlist in the Navy right after Pearl. One was 4F and ripped the letter to shreds in anger. The younger one found himself on Guadalcanal with the 1st Marines as a Navy Corpsman. He was wounded, but made it home.
Another Uncle was a Marine and got a free scenic vacation as one of the “Frozen Chosen.” He didn’t make it back.
MIKE GOT CHILLS READING YOUR POST
MEET ONCE A WEEK FOR BREAKFAST
TWO US WERE DISCUSSING LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY
ONE OF THE GUYS GOT REALLY QUITE AND TURN WHITE
ASK WHAT IS WRONG LOU
HIS REPLY I WAS THERE AS THE FAC
WE OWE A LOT TO THOSE GUYS
A day that changed so much. My father-in-law joined up as a pilot and a few months(maybe weeks)later was flying his B-17 across the Pacific after ten hours flight time in the airframe. Of the 100 in his flight class–6 survived the war.
“Before we’re done with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!”
Adm. Bull Halsey
Growing up, the Pacific theatre was always VERY real to me. My father served in that theatre and lived the rest of his life with a piece of metal in his hip, courtesy of the Imperial Japanese Army. Almost equally as impressive to a young man (me at the time) was my coach and math instructor in both Jr High and High School…..one Robert Dunlap, USMC, winner of the MOH on Iwo Jima. He took one through the hip on the Island, and we were always in awe of his accomplishments. All youngsters growing up should have the opportunity and the honor of knowing these heroes. I consider myself very lucky.
http://www.eaglepublications.com/article.php?type=Obituaries&ID=954543479_20679
Nicely done.
I agree, very well done in all respects.
Remembering with reverence the Day of Infamy, and the places on Oahu sanctified by the precious blood of those dear fellow human travelers on this day in history. May they rest in peace, and may we always be both mindful and grateful for their sacrifice.
Greetings:
You know, it just occurred tome that maybe the good old USofA should start trotting out the widows and surviving children of those killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks, kind of like what the Japanese do on the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I often reflect on how we went from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay in a couple of months short of four years.
In the late 50s, I used to cut the lawn for a man down the street. Many other neighbors had Japanese gardeners. He never would. Found out from my parents some years later that Mr. Knight had been a prisoner of the Japanese, and as a result of that he and his wife could never have kids. Took a while for that to register, but register it did.
I recall that on occasion and always on 7 December.
2,752 people died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th.
There are nearly 1200 still in the USS Arizona, with total loss of life in the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor tallied in the 2350 range.
I find it interesting, and a bit disheartening, that though the loss of a similar number once filled us with a terrible resolve, and we still refer to it as The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, the attacks of Sept 11th are known as the World Trade Center attacks. No reference to the religion, country, or even reason for them, merely a reference to the target.
We used to know who we were fighting and when we fought went all in.
Today, we seem more interested in not offending others.
The nice thing about being a former empire state like France or Britain is you’ve great food and cool shops and a lot of glorious history to discuss while chowing down at the local cafe, secure in the knowledge that you’ll never again be required to pull on your boots and actually fight for something.
I fear this is the route the USA is following. Vietnam, Gulf War, and current vets do not have the status of World War 2 vets, hence to the youngsters there’s no hero to look up to, no role model to follow.
Pity, that. Pity not that we’ve had fewer wars, but pity that we’ve had to succume to the idea that war cannot make a hero, pity that peace over the years has not been attributed to those who still served in a Cold War, pity that even though we are now in a war the populace notices little effect.
Wars used to unite a country to a common cause. Today, that role has been taken by American Idol.
It is to weep.
– Max
Max, I suspect one reason for that, is that the cowards run popular culture. If one does not make a stand against evil, you can delude youself that evil will leave you alone to carry on pleasureing youself. Self centeredness also makes it easy to mock those who will stand up, and assuage thier own well deserved feelings of inadequacy.
My Great Uncle Larry was on a DD at Pearl, Dad’s cousin Francis died on the ALBACORE, Uncle Darrel flew Hellcats, and Uncle Dan almost lost his feet to trenchfoot as a tanker at the Bulge. Badgers will never forget that war.
My wife and I just returned from our SF Pearl Harbor Memorial dinner at the Marines’ Memorial. Two were present that survived the attack. Both were on the USS San Francisco and both painted a vivid picture of ARIZONA, WEST VIRGINIA, and OKLAHOMA. We heard stories on how one could exit an engine room from a ship that was sunk and capsized.
It took a while, but Chief Johnny and his shipmates eventaully turned the tide.
69 years ago, tomorrow, my Dad enlisted while still a high school student. His right hand was raised, along with about 15 others, on our home paper front page. He’s been gone for almost 12 years, now. But he was in for most of the war effort.
God bless them all!
Thank you all ! My Dad was at Pearl Harbor on the USS Case DD370
Absent mentors and colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen. Lest we forget.
Remember Pearl Harbor, always, all ways. Never again.