67 years ago, pearl harbor was attacked

[Roon]

My Grandmother was requesting an appointment with Kaiser on the phone. The appointment was scheduled for Dec7 and the girl on the phone didn't know the significance of that day when my Grandmother commented on it.

[SpiralHawk]

1. My old man was at Pearl Harbor that day...

Army Air Force, stationed at Hickham. He would never talk about it, or talk at all about the war. He just drank, like so many of his compatriot veterans. Not much understanding or counseling in those days during and after WWII. So many of the veterans just drank.

The drinking finally killed my old man, but not before he came to Full Realization of what a bunch of murderous "Grade-A assholes" the republicon chickenhawk 'leaders' and overpaid propagandists are (Bush, Cheney, Delay, Lott, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, etc. etc. ad nauseum) -- and how destructive their cowardly, stay-safe-at-home war mongering is to the world.

I have to laugh again, ruefully, as I recall that my pop -- a decorated veteran -- saved his choice insult (Grade-A Assholes) for the Republicon Chickenhawks.

R.I.P., Pop -- the best of your legacy is carried forward. The republicon chickenhawks have been plucked and kicked to the netherworld where they belong...

[knitter4democracy]

11. Mine too.

He was six years old and playing out in the front yard of Navy housing with his sisters. He still remembers it. Thank goodness his dad was with the fleet out looking for the Japanese to the south.

[doc03]

They used airplanes made by

Mitsubishi, now they are bombing us with cars.

[doc03]

2. They used airplanes made by

Mitsubishi, now they are bombing us with cars.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "What we need is a new Pearl Harbor. Smirk." - Republicon PNACers

"The events of 9/11 rode to their rescue. (In one of their major reports, written in 2000, they noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

[Loudmxr]

4. 9-11 was not our Pearl Harbor-it was our Reichstag Fire

When the Reichstag went up in flames Hitler used that as an excuse to pass the Enabling Laws that gave him just a little bit more power than George Bush has right now.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked the United States investigated what went wrong and rightly or wrongly publicly blamed people for it.

Now who was in charge of allowing our nation's capital to remain defenseless after the two towers had been hit?? Nobody knows. Its a secret. However lots of our civil liberties disappeared that day just like AH did for the Germans.

And two post scripts. 1. It seems that a Mr Nobody Knows and Mr Unnamed Staffer have been the cause of much of the problems during the Bush administration. Mr Knows and Mr. Staffer are in an undisclosed location.

2. After Pearl Harbor... the nation went to war. A real war. Where the nation sacraficed and the President's children were in uniform. Including TR's son. :smoke:

[SpiralHawk]

5. "Who was in charge? Smirk." - Commander aWol (R) & Dickie '5 Deferments' Cheney (R)

Republicon Homelander chickenhawk fail freaks

[slackmaster]

6. My stepfather was serving as a Radio Man on an oiler that day

His ship was one of the first to enter the harbor after the attack. Everything was still in flames.

[SpiralHawk]

7. Final Pearl Harbor kick/salute

[HughBeaumont]

8. My grandfather was there.

http://www.wwiimemorial.com/registry/search/pframe.asp?HonoreeID=40792&popcount=4&tcount=4



What a great way for my Grandpa to spend his 19th year in life. He originally joined as a mechanic. I guess he was sleeping when it happened and the impact of the bombs sent him flying out of his bunk and down some steps.

J Edgar Hoover was not only paranoid, batshit crazy and borderline racist, he also distrusted foreign double agents. I learned later in life Pearl Harbor happened in part to Hoover dismissal of Dusko Popov's summer of '41 warning about an "imminent attack on a US Naval base in the winter". It's all in DC's own Spy Museum.

It's because of Hoover's bullshit that 2,350 men lost their lives on that day. Had Grandpa been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would have been one of them and I wouldn't be writing this.

Hmmm. Summer warning about an imminent attack; that sure sounds familiar . . .

Gee, what did they say about "the more things change, the more they stay the same"?

I miss him terribly and am angered almost every year around this time that I didn't get to know him as well as I should have. Shortly after my Grandmother died of lung cancer in 1977, he remarried, moved to New Bern, NC, and we moved also. Other than the occasional family event every 5-7 years, he was nothing more than a yearly voice on the phone.

RIP Grandpa. 1922-2004 :patriot:

[knitter4democracy]

12. My dad remembers that everyone knew about it.

He remembers it being all the talk on the boat over when his family moved to his dad's new station. They all expected the Japanese to attack Hawaii, but they didn't expect it from the north, from the air, or on a Sunday. The fleet was out to the south looking for them. That's why my grandpa's ship wasn't there.

[neverforget]

9. My dad's 2nd or 3rd cousin was killed on the USS Oklahoma.

http://www.state.sd.us/military/VetAffairs/sdwwiimemorial/SubPages/profiles/Display.asp?P=910

[Aristus]

10. And we retaliated against the people who actually did it.

Those were the days, huh?

[sofa king]

13. Some stories not often told.

Those who already know the basic story may be interested to read these stories:

The Japanese midget submarine, HA-19, reefed itself on the approach to the harbor entrance and damaged its gyroscope, requiring it to surface often to check its course. As a result, it was spotted and attacked by a US destroyer, which caused HA-19 to reef again. The two-man crew again un-reefed the boat by transferring ballast, but thereafter the batteries leaked and chlorine gas knocked out the crew, and the unattended sub reefed itself yet again... and again, a total of ten times.

The crew set explosive charges on the boat and swam for shore, with one of the crewmembers presumably drowning along the way. The commander, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki made it ashore to become the only midget submariner to survive the attack and the first Japanese prisoner of the war. HA-19 also washed ashore and was exhibited around the United States during the war.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/japan/japsh-h/ha19.htm
http://www.texasescapes.com/DEPARTMENTS/Guest_Columnists/Times_past/PearlHarbourMidgetSub.htm
__________

The crew of the destroyer USS Aylwin must have had a big night on Saturday, because on Sunday morning half the ship's crew and all but four officers were ashore. The senior officer at sea, aboard the USS Oglala, happened to see one of the first bombs drop and immediately radioed the entire fleet to sortie.

Aylwin's four officers were all ensigns, the senior among them having been at sea for all of eight months. Nevertheless, the half-strength crew fired up the boilers and Aylwin shot its way out of the harbor with the rest of its destroyer squadron while the ship's captain and senior officers watched helplessly from a launch. Aylwin conducted anti-submarine operations for at least two days before finally standing in to pick up its leadership.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Aylwin_(DD-355)

__________

One of the biggest "actors" in the 1970 film Tora Tora Tora was the USS Yorktown (CV/CVS-10). It portrayed the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga in the film. In real life, Yorktown was one of the first Essex-class carriers, named for the Yorktown (CV-5) which had fought at Coral Sea and been sunk at Midway. In 1944, planes from Yorktown (CV-10) managed to find and damage the Zuikaku, one of the Japanese fleet carriers which had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.

Yorktown (CV-10) was laid down as the Bonhomme Richard, but the name was changed after the sinking of the original Yorktown. CV-31 assumed the name Bonhomme Richard, and coincidentally played the carrier USS Enterprise in the film Tora Tora Tora.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-10)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bon_Homme_Richard_(CV-31)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066473/

[Waiting For Everyman]

14. My F-I-L was on one of the ships there.

And lived to tell the story, as they say. Horrific. He's gone now, as most of them are.