When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old - and like the articles that came out in '41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the ARIZONA).
Attached is an eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack as relayed to family members in a letter written home a few weeks after the assault:
"The noise was like ten thousand factories gone nuts....Quicker than I can tell you, a bomb blows up the barracks with the gang in it, a ship explodes in front of me, a hangar goes up in flames..."
The very next day President Roosevelt stood before the microphones in the well of the U.S. Capitol and asked Congress to declare war against the Empire of Japan; CLICK HERE to hear about the reactions of the American public during his broadcast...
Pearl Harbor Christmas: A World at War, December 1941
Click here to read about the Battle of Midway.
One morning a 17 year-old boy exclaimed to his amateur aviator father: "Let's fly around the island, Dad!" - this article wouldn't seem worthy of appearing on the internet if they lived on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard, but the island in question was Honolulu and the morning was December 7, 1941... "It now becomes apparent that the U.S. Government, long before Pearl Harbor, knew Tokyo's war plans almost as thoroughly as did the Japanese. To all practical purposes, Washington had ears attuned to the most intimate, secret sessions of Japan's cabinet." "The Navy's own story of the events that led up to Pearl Harbor now can be drawn from top-secret documents placed before the Pearl Harbor Committee. These documents show that misunderstanding, inadequate co-ordination and other factors helped the Japanese surprise attack, even though the Navy was almost certain a Pacific war was coming." To get a sense as to how thoroughly the Japanese diplomatic codes had been compromised, we recommend that you read the attached article. It is composed entirely of the chit-chat that took place between the government functionaries in Tokyo, their diplomats in Washington, their spies in Hawaii and their representatives in Berlin.
The article winds up explaining that the one vital communication that contained the information regarding the day of Japan's attack was not translated until December 8.
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