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More than a dozen Pearl Harbor survivors, each more than 90 years old, gathered in Hawaii this week to share stories as they marked the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack that killed 2,400 sailors, Marines and soldiers.
My father was in the first semester of his senior year in college. On December 9, the college convened a grand assembly of the students–all males, as it was a “mining college,” in order to dissuade the student body from enlisting en masse. Rather, the administration advised finishing degrees better to be able to help the war effort. Dad told me the level of anger at the Japanese was unfathomable.
Most of the graduates of the Class of 1942 went on to serve overseas. Something like 30 percent of them didn’t come home.
Sherm
My dad was 13 at the time, living in Los Angeles (as was my mom age 10 … they’d meet in 1950)
He says not only the level of anger was off the charts, but CA was gripped in fear that the west coast was next.
He joined the army at 17 and ended up two years in Japan with the occupation army (11th Airborne)
Algernon Sydney was hanged December 7, 1683.
His fight is alive today.
I had an uncle who was a Seabee in the Pacific during the war. He passed away in the late 1970s. He was physically big and had a big personality. James Gandolfini’s performances remind me of him. Anyway, though he was funny and friendly and an elder in his church, he was unrepentant in his hatred of the Japanese. He had his reasons.
The point is, the past fades and, hopefully, with it, old animosities. I don’t know anyone these days who has a generalized hatred of the Japanese.
When I reflect on this, it gives me hope for the future.
I don’t know anyone these days who has a generalized hatred of the Japanese.
I agree. Even among vets, there is little animosity. The Japanese government that started the war was defeated, so there’s no reason to hate the people.
My dad’s uncle was also a Seabee – couldn’t stand the Japanese until the day he died or tolerate anything made in Japan.
My dad was in the navy in the Atlantic theater, and apparently had no animosity for the Japanese or their products. He had a Kawasaki motorcycle at one point, and drove a Honda 600 (that is a car, folks, a very tiny car) for many years.
I remember those tiny Hondas. Rode in one back when I was small enough to fit.
Told my still-Honda-loyal wife it looked like a deep-sea diving helmet (size-wise, too).
“Remember Pearl Harbor” ~ Carson Robison
“(Let’s) Remember Pearl Harbor” ~ Sammy Kaye
My dad was a big man. I don’t know how he squeezed into that thing.
He could pick up the back end of it by himself.
My dad didn’t have any particular animosity toward the Japanese, even though he was a Navy aviator in the Pacific. Yet, he always refused to buy Japanese TVs. It was a sad day for him when Zenith stopped making American televisions, as reading about the possibility of sending moving pictures through the air like radio waves when he was in high school was what drove him to attend college.
My Father, who served starting in 1944, and was in charge of communications at Okinawa after the Invasion, still can’t abide the smell of beets because, as he says, ‘the smell reminds me of dead Jap bodies’. The image of mothers jumping off cliffs holding their children has never left his mind.
He has no hatred for the Japanese, but he is still wary of their motives – understandable.
> During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, “We the People of the U.S.A.” produced the following:
22 aircraft carriers,
8 battleships,
48 cruisers,
349 destroyers,
420 destroyer escorts,
203 submarines,
34 million tons of merchant ships,
100,000 fighter aircraft,
98,000 bombers,
24,000 transport aircraft,
58,000 training aircraft,
93,000 tanks,
257,000 artillery pieces,
105,000 mortars,
3,000,000 machine guns, and
2,500,000 military trucks.
We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb, and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.
It’s worth noting, that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama Administration couldn’t even build a web site that worked.<
link
life when america was slightly less proggtarded
Inside the Pearl Harbor Attack (PHOTOS)
Newrouter,
Among the photos in your link is that of the USS Shaw suffering a magazine explosion. She was repaired and returned to duty on August 31, 1942, earning 11 battle stars for her service. Link.
Are you casting aspersions on Pharaoh Barackhenaten Obazymandias?
Heretic.
F.H. Buckley: The Inevitability of Monarchy
I think it was Stephen Green who told the story long ago (pre-PJM) about his grandfather having a late mid-life crisis and looking for a little red sports car to cruise around in. He liked the Eclipse, and decided to buy one. When signing the paperwork, he succumbed to a fit of the giggles. When asked what was so funny, he said, “I would never have guessed, 60 years ago when I was bombing their factory, that I’d be buying a sports car from these guys in my old age.”
It’s a good story, regardless. (It’s the truthiness that matters anyway.)