Remember Pearl Harbor

Subject: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Greg B
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 06:02 PM

It was 66 years ago tomorrow morning that residents of
Honolulu awoke to find a Nip in the air that had nothing
to do with the autumn. Those events touched off a conflagration
the scale of which hasn't been known before or since, took
millions of lives, changed billions more, and ultimately
ushered in the era of nuclear warfare.

They also brought us a boat-load of great music, much of it
astonishingly up-beat.

My Uncle Vince was one of the brave souls who fought in
the Pacific theatre of operations...he passed away earlier
this year, so this we'll be the first Dec 7 that he won't
be here to remember.

I recently glanced at some of the artifacts of his service---
his Purple heart and two Jap bayonets whose owners, apparently,
had no further use for them.

I guess I'll have to remember for him, and put on some Benny
Goodman and maybe even a bit of Oscar Brand.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: gnu
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 06:17 PM

Lest we forget.

Subject: Lyr Add: REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR (Reid/Kaye)
From: oldhippie
Date: 06 Dec 06 - 06:35 PM

REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR
Don Reid - words
Sammy Kaye - music

History,
In every century,
Records an act that lives forevermore.
We'll recall,
As into line we fall,
A thing that happened on Hawaii’s shore.

Let's remember Pearl Harbor, as we go to meet the foe.
Let's remember Pearl Harbor, as we did the Alamo.
We will always remember how they died for liberty.
Let's remember Pearl Harbor and go on to victory.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: beardedbruce
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 03:27 PM

Pearl Harbor Raid, 7 December 1941 --
Overview and Special Image Selection
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.

pictures

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Richard in Manchester
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 04:23 PM

Greg, the greatest possible respect to everyone who fought for the cause, but "...touched off a conflagration the scale of which hasn't been known before or since..."? That, presumably, would be apart from the conflagration usually known as the 'Second World War', which had already been raging for more than two years by the time December '41 came around? The scale of death and destruction on the East European front (connection with Pearl Harbour: nil) far exceeded that of any other theatre of the war.

The irony with Pearl Harbour, of course, is that the Japanese got the idea from the British. A handful of torpedo-carrying Royal Navy biplanes had raided the Italian port of Taranto, where they effectively put the Italian navy out of action for the rest of the war. That's what the Japanese were trying to do to the US Pacific fleet. I guess they bit off a little more than they could chew.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: voyager
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 05:51 PM

Brigadier General Kenneth Taylor passed away in November -
    The Reluctant Hero

Along with George Welch -
   The Tiger of Pearl Harbor

These HEROES were the only two flyers to engage the Japanese attack planes during the bombardment. I grew up knowing Mr. Welch's sons.

Both Taylor and Welch were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) but have historically been denied Medal of Honor recognition. You see...they disobeyed orders!

Lest We Forget
voyager

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: voyager
Date: 07 Dec 06 - 05:53 PM

Correction -

   Welch and Taylor were awarded the "Distinguished Service Cross"

voyager

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Greg B
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 10:01 AM

And, Richard, if the 'greatest generation' before you had
split hairs like you do, you'd probably be splitting them
in German.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Richard in Manchester
Date: 08 Dec 06 - 11:47 AM

Well, Greg, my forebears fought just like yours, and I'm damn sure if they were here now they would say they did it so you and I can split hairs in peace.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: DeeRod
Date: 10 Dec 06 - 10:13 PM

Thought I posted this before. I remember this song from about '45 when I was 7. I sing it every Dec. in Royal Mile Chanty sing (See Wincing devil photos) I remember one verse from the flip side of the record

You're a sap mister jap, you don't know uncle sammy
when he fights for his rights you'll take it on the lammy
Wait and see before we're done, the A B C & D* will sink your rising sun, You're a sap mister jap.....

   Amer. Brit. China Dutch(Indo)

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: GUEST,Tojo
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 05:08 AM

I read that Churchill knew about the forth coming raid Pearl Harbour but kept it quiet, knowing that it would bring the USA into the war.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 05:16 AM

Really Tojo?
Which comic was that in then?
How would Churchill have known?
And if he did, the knowledge that an attack was planned would still have brought US into the war.
Your constant attempts to discredit Britain are pathetic.
You are a sad, obsessed numpty.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Tom Hamilton frae Saltcoats Scotland
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 05:18 AM

TORA TORA TORA, I'm sorry to hear about Pearl Habor, however if it wasn't the Japs, America wouldn't be in the war at all. home of the brave?

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Tom Hamilton frae Saltcoats Scotland
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 05:22 AM

you were late for the WW1 WW2. But it was sad about Pearl Harbor and all those who died.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Tom Hamilton frae Saltcoats Scotland
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 06:01 AM

My late father fought in the 2nd world war, not because he wanted to but he had to, he just hated war of any kind. When it was finished he just didn't talk about or glorify it.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: GUEST,Tojo
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 06:55 AM

read this
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v11/v11p431_Lutton.html

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 07:11 AM

Thanks Tojo.
This piece dismiisses that theory.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: kendall
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 08:09 AM

War. The ultimate failure.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: GUEST,Tojo
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 08:09 AM

In one of its policies, the United States came close to direct duplication of Fascism. This was in its treatment of the Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. After the Pearl Harbor attack, anti-Japanese hysteria spread in the government. One Congressman said: "I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps. Damn them! Let's get rid of them!"

Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast - 110,000 men, women, and children - to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei - children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens. The other fourth - the Issei, born in Japan - were barred by law from becoming citizens. In 1944 the Supreme Court upheld the forced evacuation on the grounds of military necessity. The Japanese remained in those camps for over three years.

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Greg B
Date: 11 Dec 06 - 12:52 PM

Of course as we luxuriate in the 20/20 hindsight of self-loathing,
we must remember that none of these terrible things would have
happened had the Japanese Empire not sought to impose their
hegemony upon the entire Pacific Basin.

It is convenient to forget at all of these things--- from internment
camps to Hiroshima--- were a response of a people desperately trying
to protect themselves against another people (actually an entire
Axis of peoples) bent upon the destruction of all which they held
as dear and valuable.

Insert that situation into a world where views of race and
nationality were not nearlly as 'sophisticated' as we like
to think of our own being (or at least not pushed as far beneath
the surface). The result was things like the internment camps, along
with a certain suspicion of both Germans (including Jews) and
Italians during the war.

Fortunately, we now know better and Arabs don't have to deal with
that here, today, now do they?

I will not claim that the internment camps were the right thing to
do.

But I will point out that this sort of incessant critique
what was done by the Allies in pursuit of the right, usually
by individuals who were not there but managed to benefit enormously
from the Allies' success, is more than a little tiresome.

(And, by the way, while my Uncle Vince was fighting for his adopted
country in the Pacific, the Navy came and took his little property
on Silver Strand beach, which would now be worth a couple of million,
to expand Port Hueneme, in contravention of the fact that it was
illegal to exercise eminant domain in such a way on a citizen
soldier, except that it turns out that he was a British subject
at the time, albeit raised in the US and serving as a volunteer
in the 116th Army Combat Engineers. Somehow, our 'reparations'
seem to have gotten lost in the mail. On the other hand, I was
not required to be schooled in Japanese in elementary school
in California.)

Subject: RE: Remember Pearl Harbor
From: Les from Hull
Date: 12 Dec 06 - 11:08 AM

GUEST, Tojo - I think that your reading of history had been a little one-sided. If you think that internment of Japanese-Americans was bad, try to find out what the Japanese internment camps and prisoner of war camps were like. Investigate the use of 'forced labour' from subjected peoples. Find out how the Japanese soldiers behaved in China and elsewhere.

Everyone knew that there would be war between Japan and the USA. Agressive moves from the Japanese can be traced back to the turn of the century. The only counter available to Roosevelt was to ban the export to Japan of materials useful in war.

But the Americans didn't know when or where the war would start. Most military strategists thought that the initial attack would be against the Philippines, as indeed it was to have been before Yamamoto developed his plan for Pearl Harbor. The reason that the American carriers escaped Pearl Harbor was that two of them were delivering 'planes to reinforce Midway and Wake Islands.