66 years to the day, we look back at one of the worst events in the history of this country . Some of us had relatives that were at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, or maybe they called to serve their country immediately after. Today we look back at the “Greatest Genration” and say thank-you:
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy’s battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire’s southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.
Eighteen months earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese agression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.
By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan’s diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.
The U.S. Fleet’s Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World’s oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead. Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya.
These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan’s far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered.
However, the memory of the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on. Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan’s striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.
The United States Of America fought in her darkest hours with a resolve to never give up. She had but one goal, victory, and in the end, she achieved it. The battles fierce, the days unending, but she never gave up.
46 years ago, John Kennedy spoke these words:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. 4
This much we pledge”and more.
Those words stand the test of time.
And some liberal idiots dont even know what it means today their too darn stupid its too bad they are we need to REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR[-o<^:)^
SF Liberals grandpa was a Marine officer and was there when Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7th, 1941. He helped man an anti-aircraft weapon.
His wife, my grandma, said that she and the other women at the apartment building they were at had all gone outside to lay in ditches, and said that they saw some “Jap” planes swooping so low over their heads that they could see the goggles and scarves from the cockpit.
My mom, was also there…in utero. She was born in March of 1942.
The US was so unprepared for WWII, that they had to conduct basic training without rifles for the first few months of the war except for actual live fire exercises. They trained soldiers on the manual of arms using things like mop and broom handles.