Pearl Harbor day - Anniversary of a date Americans will never forget
I personally feel that Pearl Harbor Day is as important as any other day observing the sacrifice our servicemen in the armed forces have made. I would hope someday that Dec. 7 becomes a national holiday.
These days stoke the fire in me that gets fed by a lot of the things I don’t like right now in the USA (and our close allies!), that the people of the ‘Greatest Generation’ sacrificed for. I feel that this ‘Entitlement Generation’ today has come about in no small part because kids are hardly made to study or be exposed to the of true history.
These things (War, slavery, other factual and unsavory history) while hard to swallow and probably shocking to these coddled children, teach what sacrifice and personal responsibility mean.
Speaking in terms of Pearl Harbor and WW2 only with no intention to slight any service people before or after: These people came from possibly the last time we will see in a long time where the concept of personal responsibility and thought for the future was common. Story after story you read and hear in interviews bears witness to the ideal that people made winning the war and defending our (and our allies) ideals were each person’s responsibility and they took it on as such.
I can only hope that in my lifetime I will see the return of this kind of attitude. I have hope for such, though no evidence it’s going to happen anytime soon.
The Greatest Generation is dying at 3000+ / day. If you know anyone from that era, spend time with them before it’s too late. They left their mark on history for the betterment of everyone who can read this.
I cannot close my update with ‘Have a nice Pearl Harbor Day’. This is not a day to have ‘nice’. This is a day to consider and reflect and enjoy the fact we can all discuss it.
-Me
From:
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm
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.
These days stoke the fire in me that gets fed by a lot of the things I don’t like right now in the USA (and our close allies!), that the people of the ‘Greatest Generation’ sacrificed for. I feel that this ‘Entitlement Generation’ today has come about in no small part because kids are hardly made to study or be exposed to the of true history.
These things (War, slavery, other factual and unsavory history) while hard to swallow and probably shocking to these coddled children, teach what sacrifice and personal responsibility mean.
Speaking in terms of Pearl Harbor and WW2 only with no intention to slight any service people before or after: These people came from possibly the last time we will see in a long time where the concept of personal responsibility and thought for the future was common. Story after story you read and hear in interviews bears witness to the ideal that people made winning the war and defending our (and our allies) ideals were each person’s responsibility and they took it on as such.
I can only hope that in my lifetime I will see the return of this kind of attitude. I have hope for such, though no evidence it’s going to happen anytime soon.
The Greatest Generation is dying at 3000+ / day. If you know anyone from that era, spend time with them before it’s too late. They left their mark on history for the betterment of everyone who can read this.
I cannot close my update with ‘Have a nice Pearl Harbor Day’. This is not a day to have ‘nice’. This is a day to consider and reflect and enjoy the fact we can all discuss it.
-Me
From:
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm
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.