“AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.”
Those chilling words went out over the wire 64 years ago today. I had planned on a funny post this morning. In fact, I sat down to write it last night and the computer crapped out on me so I had to shut it down for the night. I knew that I could string something funny together – a few one-liners from mom, an email joke, so I wasn’t concerned with getting this off late. While booting it up this morning, the date appeared and all thoughts of being funny went out of my head. I had forgotten the date. Not really forgotten, but the days have slid by and I wasn’t paying attention. December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy. That’s why this post is way late – I couldn’t just throw it together before mom got up. No, this had to wait until after she ate and I could sit down and do it justice – look up a few facts, although I know the story well. As a history major I have an intense interest in a few key moments in our past, and this is one of them. There are many people who claim that FDR knew that the attack was going to happen and allowed it because he wanted to get into the war. FDR did want to get into the war, he did want to fight Hitler, he did want to help his friend Churchill – but I will never believe that he knew the precise place it would occur and the time that the attack would happen. What president goes into war with his navy demolished? In fact, most people thought the target would be our bases in the Philippines. No one believed that the attack would come without a declaration of war from Japan – not even the Japanese. All through the night before the attack the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, D.C. and his assistant worked on deciphering the coded message from Japan – without the help of their decoders. They were slow typists and by the time they had the message decoded, the attack had begun. Japan had attacked without declaring war – and for a country so caught up in the tradition of honor, it was unforgivable. Honor. That’s why Japan was angry with us in the first place. Set aside the fact that we had cut off their oil supply, this was really about “saving face”. Many people are not aware that Japan was one of our allies in WWI. At the end of the war, when the powers that be sat down to sign the treaty, we did the unthinkable to the country of Japan. We denied them the right to sit with the “big guns”, the equivalence of sitting them at the kiddie table – and they never forgot that we caused them to lose face. It was a beautiful day in Hawaii – the sun had barely been up. What men were not sleeping off the effects of Saturday night were lined up on the deck of a ship (I think the Arizona) awaiting Sunday service. The band had begun to play The National Anthem when a plane flew low overhead – and a bomb fell into the water. The attack had begun. There were many mistakes made by us, many clues to the attack which were misinterpreted – I could go into them all, but I won’t (I will if you ask). 2,403 were killed, missing, and died of wounds; 1,178 were wounded. If you would like to know more, check out the book At Dawn We Slept by Gordon W. Prange. I never recommend a movie in place of a book, but the movie Tora, Tora, Tora should be watched also. The advisor on this movie was Prange. Forget the Affleck rendition – it’s really a historical travesty. I want to leave you with a little story from At Dawn We Slept: “The next morning, when dawn spilled over the horizon, Quynn looked hopefully towards California. As the early mists cleared and the billows of smoke died down, he saw that she had not capsized; and she had not sunk beyond recall. Though slowly settling, she stood on a fairly even keel. And from her stern the Stars and Stripes caught the breeze and proudly rippled into life.”
I have to go put my flag out now.
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