Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day: Historical
photos show the Dec. 7, 1941 attack in Hawaii

Had Yamamoto asked for a cease fire on December 8, today's Democrats would have agreed. That's why we've lost every war since 1945.

No carriers, though.

Poster # 1 makes an excellent point. In the wake of the December 7 attacks today's Democrats would have called for "restraint' so as not to 'harden Japanese attitudes against us" and "heighten tensions in the Pacific region". FDR would be denounced as a warmonger whose only aim was to enrich his aristocratic friends with military contracts and charges of "white supremacy" would have been thrown about, all picked up and amplified by the puppy dog media. Today's Democrats would have called for a conference in Davos under U.N. auspices to determine the "root causes" of Japanese hostility. After all, it all began with Commodore Perry, right? Hoo, boy.

Sorry for a second post but there's a good line of thought running here. I would add that today's democrats (and the rest of the world) would have insisted on a "proportional response" to the attack. The Doolittle Raid would have been condemned for killing civilians, Midway would have been too much carnage, today's Republicans would have caved, and our involvement would have ended there.

This is the day I remember my father. He was a senior at Notre Dame and was studying in the library. A student came running in yelling "The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor". The Navy was offering college graduates who enlisted, the rank of Ensign, so my father enlisted in the Navy. He was the communications officer and was at quite a few of the big battles in the Pacific, especially Okinawa. After the war, he came home and worked in the family business, married my mother and was the best dad ever. He died at the age of 93 after suffering dementia for three years. He was of the Greatest Generation and I miss him to this day. I am happy that he isn't around to see how far this country has fallen. He would have been shocked and appalled.

Those who trade a little liberty for a little security end up losing both!

But remember to put this into perspective as you look at the photos of carnage and destruction. J6 was worse, I know because my TV told me. Good one #1!

Great point, #1 and #3. And blessings on your dad, #5 To these points, remember that as heinous and terrible as the Japanese military was back then, they really did only attack the military target. We could argue about the sneak attack aspect coming without a formal declaration of war, etc. but that belabors my point. The Japanese (sorry ...our Asian cousins) could have also bombed Honolulu or many other civilian targets. But they didn't ... and never mind the reasons ... that's the point. Even these evil vipers made a distinction! Something the scum called HAMAS didn't do. They deliberately committed murder & rape and then mutilated the bodies. (BTW --- "Hamas" is an acronym in Arabic of its official name, the Islamic Resistance Movement.)

This is a day that I honor. My father received his notice to appear before the draft board two months after Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the Navy and served on a refueling ship in the Pacific Theatre. He was discharged in 1946. He went to storekeeper's school while in the Navy. He worked in a large bank and I think his classes at storekeeper's school helped him become a good banker. He was skilled at record-keeping. My father kept everything related to his service in the Navy, including a log about his days on his ship, the USS Tappahannock. I found all of these documents when I cleaned out his house after he passed away. I agree that those that trade a little liberty for a little security receive neither. Today we remembes those who died on December 7, 1941. I have been to the Pearl Harbor Memorial.

We've got ourselves another war. A gut bustin, mother-lovin Navy war. From the movie ''In Harm's Way.''

My uncle was in the Navy and was on a ship in Pearl Harbor when the attack happened. He survived it.

Here Here #5. My father enlisted on Dec. 10th, 1941, and served in the fifth army. He was in North Africa, Sicily, the entire length of Italy and the was in France when the war ended in Europe. I visited an old aircraft factory yesterday where they made the Marauder aircraft during WWII. With big band music playing and photos of the planes being made and old uniforms on display, the faces and names of all the men I grew up with came back to mind. Everyone was in WWII. I miss them as well. One man in particular who I called uncle Zerby, was a tank commander in the Pacific. He hated the Japanese and would make a trip to Pearl Harbor quite often.

For any of you who treasure the Hawaiian Islands, include a stop on O'ahu and visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial. It will be a very moving experience. Some years ago, when I visited the Memorial, many other visitors appeared to be of Japanese ancestry. One very old Japanese woman who experienced WWII came up to me while I was standing in front of the memorial wall of names and expressed remorse and said in very plain English, "our government lied to us". (her words), then she walked away to cry.

I always pay attention to this day, and have spend decades reading about, and when I could, talking to people who fought in that Pacific War. I have known men who fought in some of the great sea and air battles in the Pacific, and women who were nurses on islands in the Pacific, too. People did amazing things. Sadly, many of their children and grandchildren are not of much use to anyone. Neither myself or my wife would have existed had that war not brought our fathers and mothers together. Her father was in Florida doing flight training for the Army Air Corp to be a fighter pilot when he met her mother. My father was in California just after the war ended, still in the Navy as a fighter pilot when he met my mother near a base north of the LA area. And I'm sure that there are millions of other similar stories of fathers and mothers who were moved around by this war and the events immediately afterwards which caused them to meet who they never would have met otherwise. It was a terrible war, but it certainly changed our country, and in many ways, it improved our country.

According to current Democrat strategic thinking, the US should have ceased operations against the Japanese after the Battle of Midway, since the Japanese Navy was essentially "broken." Of course, it wasn't, nor was their Army, which still occupied China, and most of the Pacific Islands. Japan was then where China is today. Just look at where Democrats were and are on each in order to see what they've devolved into. Democrats are the enemy within. Ironically, it was the thing that made Japan strong that also lead to their downfall, namely, their undying loyalty to the Emperor of Japan, according to Bushido code and tradition. Japan's military officers were each prepared to commit Seppuku in disgrace over a botched military operation under their command in order to avoid dishonoring the Emperor. As a result, Japan's command structure was highly motivated. My late F-I-L fought on Iwo Jima and on the few times he opened up about the events there said that what bothered him the most was the way they had to use flame throwers to silence the machine gun nests dug into the mountainside because the enemy had been chained in place to keep them from abandoning their positions during the fighting. Most of those conscripts were just poor farm kids from rural areas, sent to fight someone's war far away. It was all too familiar.

1000's of illegal cartel supported immigrates come in every day. We have Pearl Harbor on our border thank to FJB and Democrats.

The Japanese attack plan against Pearl Harbor had been designed a decade earlier by an American admiral. Since 1923 the U.S. Navy had conducted large-scale naval exercises, termed "Fleet Problems," during which U.S. Naval forces would engage in mock battles with a purported European or Asian attacker. Fleet Problem Number 13 was a mock attack by a "militaristic, Asian, island nation against the military base at Pearl Harbor." The exercise was designed to test Pearl's defenses and assess its vulnerability to an attack. The attacking force was under the command of Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell. The admiral was a qualified naval aviator, one of the few admirals to have earned his aviator wings at a time when battleship command was still the path to promotions. In 1927, he took command of the aircraft carrier Saratoga and was instrumental in developing carrier tactics. At the time, carriers were classified as "fleet scouting elements." They were not valued as capital ships and were considered expendable. Yarnell maintained that Japan "had always started operations by attacking before a declaration of war." Accordingly, he designed an attack plan that used carrier aviation to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl's defenders had anticipated that Yarnell would attack with his battleships. Instead, he left his battleships behind and advanced with the carriers Saratoga and Lexington to a point N-NE of Hawaii. At dawn, on Sunday February 7, 1932, Yarnell launched his attack with a force of 152 planes from the two carriers. His attack force first attacked the airfields and then attacked the ships on Battleship Row. Yarnell achieved total surprise. The airfields were put out of commission with not a single plane getting airborne during the attack. The attacking force scored multiple hits; they dropped sacks of white flour to simulate bombs on the battleships. The umpires declared Yarnell's attack had been a complete success and declared him the winner. The Army/Navy brass would have none of it. They complained that Yarnell had cheated. He had attacked at dawn on a Sunday morning, a time considered "inappropriate" for an attack. His attack vector from the N-NE had mimicked planes arriving from the mainland. Most importantly, the Navy argued, low level precision bombing of battleships at anchor was unrealistic since "everyone knew that Asians lacked sufficient hand-eye coordination to engage in that kind of precision bombing." Pressured by the War Department the umpires reversed their decision and declared that the defenders had won the exercise.

There doesn't seem to be much coverage of Pearl Harbor Day this year. The world is still a very dangerous place. I think the media would like to put this day into the memory hole.

unfortunately, what we have here on December 7.2023 is, in no way, a reflection of how the day is to be spent, that is when I was growing up in the 40's, 50's there was great meaning in the "Remember Pearl Harbor" slogan but today students are barely taught anything about the building of our government and the construction of the greatest, freest society in the history of mankind when once was the thought of togetherness and fairness within our societal domain the prevailing attitude was the individual was above the society and the society was beholden to the individual, that thought began in the 60's and has grown out of control since then we cannot grow and we cannot prosper if there is only the individual, there must be a society to have any sort of growth, peace and prosperity, simply meaning that everyone grows, prospers and shares in the peace inherent in a society that is considerate of the individual as a member of that society, nothing can, or should, change that

My darling husband...passed...enlisted when he was 18 years old to the Navy...he loved his country and went off to fight....he later helped crack the Japanese code...he was a radio man...God bless him....

Thank you to all those who died at Pearl on December 7th. Thank you to all those injured at Pearl on December 7th. Thank you to all those who enlisted afterwards and gave up so much to defend their country. America will never, ever see a better generation of men and women. RIP.

My Uncle Bill, my Dad's brother, enlisted in the Navy on December 8th. He served in the Pacific Theater the entire war. He would never talk about his experiences, even when I majored in history at college he wouldn't answer my questions. His only response was to proudly proclaim, "I saw the inside of every brig in the South Pacific!" It was several months after the war ended before his ship landed in San Fransisco. He went on a bender and got a drunk for week. One day he was walking down the street and passed an Army recruiting station that had a poster outside for the U.S. Calvary, and having the desire to learn how to ride a horse, he went in and enlisted. He was trained for the last Calvary unit used for military action. He was sent to Germany as an Occupation soldier. His unit would patrol the border between the U.S. sector and the Russian sector. They would coordinate with groups of German citizens that wanted to get out of the Russian area and into the area controlled by the Americans. As he said, at night in the thick forests it was hard to tell exactly where the border line was and they would ride their horses behind the group of refugees to protect them from the following Russians. "The Russkies wouldn't dare shoot an American soldier because no one wanted to start Hell up again!" He met my Aunt Anna, a Czech refugee, in London one weekend. Their love affair was interrupted by the Korean War. He came back and they were married in London on Christmas Eve in 1954, with all the church bells ringing. No, we don't make men and women like that anymore. God bless them all. May they rest in peace and pray for us!

We are watching the old TV series The World at War on YouTube which is set during WWII which serves as a reminder of what happened before and could again. ...God bless the peacemakers who both protect and defend Liberty. God bless America.

Thanks #15. I didn’t know that.

My father worked for the govt. at Pearl Harbor repairing the ships. He was sent back to Long Beach, CA a few weeks before the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7. He had developed iron poisoning from whatever he came into contact on the ships. What is interesting is that I was told those who lived in Honolulu, Hawaii knew they were going to be attacked by Japan. Did our government know that too and not prepare for that and let that happen? Some day we will find out.

Democrats now would want to put Japanese Americans in prison now ... oh wait never mind.

#22, TQ, your last couple of sentences pulls it together. While my dad was not involved in the Pacific Theatre, he had the "joy" of fighting the krauts in the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. Only one time did he ever speak of it and said the worst of evil was here on this earth and it will come again. We were just kids and did not know what to say. After that, his war experience in Belgium/Germany was buried in his mind for good. But where we grew up in northern Illinois in more recent times (1965), our elementary school principal, Mr Kroll (who lost a leg in Korea), taught a class for eighth graders titled, "What is Propaganda". He warned us rather strongly that the communists will try again someday to destroy America. In high school in 1968 my auto shop teacher, Mr. Kranz, (God, please continue to rest his glorious and most patriotic soul), warned us guy as to the same threat. My geometry teacher in high school, Mr. Zetterberg (a US Navy officer in WWII whose grave site headstone stands a mere forty feet from where my folks are buried), warned us of the exactly same thing. It was hard to write this comment. Sorry, I don't know what else to say.

On that fateful day my teen aged father and his parents were returning my great uncle Raymond, a career Navy man, back to his ship in Portsmouth NH as fast as they could after hearing of the bombing. Raymond was on a destroyer then in the undeclared war in the North Atlantic with the Germans. Now Raymond was the proverbial black sheep in the family. He spent over thirty years in the Navy going from Seaman to Chief and back down again. He once tossed an Ensign overboard in the harbor and back down in rank he went. As he was being dropped off at his ship he told my father to join the Navy and he would get him on his ship on his ship. As soon as he left my grandparents told my father he was going in Army and not the Navy. My great uncle survived two wars and had two ships torpedoed out from under him and sadly died right after retiring from the Navy from a heart attack.