Each year on December 7, we honor and remember the 2,403 service members and civilians who were killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. A further 1,178 people were injured in the attack, which permanently sank two U.S. Navy battleships (the USS Arizona and the USS Utah) and destroyed 188 aircraft.
Today is the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Dead ships sail again. The fleet has arisen from Pearl Harbor…
“Victory at Sea” was a triumph.
Never forget Pearl Harbor!
Rodgers and Hammerstein used a theme from that work to write a song for a musical, and Perry Como made it one of his classic songs “No Other Love” …. a different song than the torch song “No Other Love” by Jo Stafford.
for Perry Como
for Jo Stafford
I was from the Midwest, but I did a lot of my early years in California.
When I was in 11th grade in public high school in CA, Ms. Kobata, our language teacher, gave us a pop quiz on 12/7. I cupped my hands around my mouth for a PA speaker effect, and called out in a dry NASA or military announcer voice: “Nip Sneak Attack! Nip Sneak Attack! Nip Sneak Attack!”
Ms. Kobata started yelling at me, then broke into an angry crying jag. I had to go to the disciplinary people at the school.
Mr. F, the punisher, looked like a little thinner version of Jack Webb. He was drinking coffee when I came in.
“What brings you here today, WT?” he asked.
He had seen me many times.
I told him. When I hit the “Nip Sneak Attack” impression, he snotted the coffee he was drinking all over his desk, then started laughing uncontrollably.
Mr. F had been a Marine in the SW Pacific during WWII. Ms. Kobata had been interned as a girl. Different points of view.
Of course, Dad and Mom saw it Mr. F’s way when I got home. No harm, no foul. Dad, Uncle Chuck, and Uncle Rusty were also Pacific Theater vets of WWII. The Japs stole years from these men’s lives.
I am 72 years old and I still can hear a friend’s father always saying Jap bastards when anything made in Japan passed through his hands. I never heard one word without the other from that WWII vet.
My Dad served aboard an escort carrier in WWII.
One Friday, same year in high school, I brought home Jane’s Fighting Ships. Dad saw it, and said, “Look up my carrier.” I did and said nothing for a minute.
“You’re not gonna like this, Dad.”
“What?”
“They scrapped your ship in 1959 and sold the scrap to the Japs.”
Dad spent the weekend alternating between cursing the Japs and cursing the Eisenhower administration.
LT Cmdr. Henry Saloman was I believe the main assistant researcher for Harvard Prof. Samuel E. Morison who was an admiral as well. (Harvard used to have quality professors like him in the old days… and Copeland, Bliss, Norton, (Monuments Man Mason Hammond’ 28 prof. of Classics) et al.) as Morison had written the all-encompassing 15-volume work of the US Navy in WWII. He was acquainted with Robert Sarnoff from prep school and Harvard, whose dad , David, was president of RCA/NBC, and proposed the idea for a documentary. Leonard Graves had a great narrator’s voice.
My wife and I, along with my daughter and her daughter are going to Oahu in February for a few days. In planning for this trip, I told my daughter that the only thing I am interested in for this trip (first time to Hawaii) is to visit the Arizona Memorial. I don’t care about anything else but going to pay my respects. If I could just fly there, visit the memorial, and then immediately fly back, that would be enough for me to consider the trip a roaring success. I have no connection to the Pacific War; my father and the others in the family who were involved in WWII were all in the European Theater of Operations. But something about Pearl Harbor has always been close to my heart. The opportunity to visit Pearl will be a life highlight for me. I have one ‘book end’ in that I’ve been on the Missouri and stood where the surrender docs were signed; this is my chance to be where is all started. (Excuse me but this will be an emotional experience for me.)
I agree that Pearl Harbor is a “must see” when in Hawaii. It’s a very moving experience, but on our last visit to Pearl Harbor the feature I was most impressed by was the memorial for the submarine crews. Be sure to allow time to see that and read each of the incredible stories of heroism. They were stories that every American student should be reading. It’s right there near the USS Missouri. Be sure to search it out!
It is…impressive…it’s before you catch the shuttle boats to the Arizona….
I agree fully. My father was a submariner in the Pacific during WWII. He rotated off his sub to marry my mother in Brisbane, Australia, the sub’s base. His sub was sunk on that cruise, with all hands lost, by the Japanese. He rarely talked of that as you can imagine.
Enjoy your trip and safe travels. Please say a prayer from me while you are there.
My son is there right now. He was not sure about going, but everyone kept telling him what you said, and that this would be something he would remember the rest of his life. Seems to be having a pretty good experience.
FDR’s speech after the Pearl Harbor attack. Very moving, the man sure could give a great speech.
Thanks for posting and remembering all those souls.
Salute.
Still curious as to what was going on in Washington prior to the attack…was this expected or really a sneak attack?
Was this really a way for the US to enter the war? And were bureaucrats pushing this as a way for the US to finally exit the Depression and provide cover for Roosevelt’s missteps in his economic policy?
Always wondered…
Visited Pearl Harbor a couple of years ago and it still humbles one to be there.
My father survived Pearl then on to Guadalcanal, and the ETO. From front lines to behind lines. 1st generation American of a Russian family, spoke 7 languages fluently and loved classical music.
What a childhood he provided that lead to adult responsibilities, joys, laughter, morals, and freedom.
I was moved to read the letters sent back home from American YOUNG men who sacrificed so very very much in that war.
It was pivotal time in my life to understand not only the evil they believed that must be conquered but that the reason for such moral dignity. Many of these young men and women were Christians, who would never come back home..and yet they signed up, armored up and took on a new image of a warrior that has not been seen since and probably never will again.
to understand a threat and to take action against it is a normal response.
but to realize an existential threat from afar, takes a different kind of righteous cause.
we the people has this privilege from those before us..to not only honor them, but to respond to threats against good.
they went from sold to hard men in a blink of any eye. If you doubt the mystery of miracles, let that war be a reminder.
when it matters to take up arms against evil, good men and women will.
And we will again.
soon
God Bless America
…. USS Oklahoma — capsized and sunk; refloated for scrapping but sank under tow 1947.