A date which will live in infamy

[weldingisfun]

Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941, one day after the Empire of Japan's attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Japanese declaration of war on the United States and the British Empire. The name derives from the first line of the speech: Roosevelt describing the previous day as "a date which will live in infamy". Never forget.

 

[repete]

Always be ready to defend our nation.

 

[MossRoad]

Yep. Tomorrow is Pearl Harbor Day.

 

[Jim Nelson]

My 2 oldest brothers were both there, the oldest had been in the Navy over a year and his ship was re-provisioning and he had shore duty at the time. The second oldest had just finished boot camp in San Diego and had been shipped to Pearl to meet his assigned carrier when it made port. My oldest bro. came out with no problems but the younger was still aboard the transport ship and they were hit and during the rescue and fire fighting operations he was burned and received a Purple Heart.
The older bro. stayed in for 20 years and loved the life. The younger bro. stayed til the war was over and got out as soon as possible after that. Neither one would talk much about it and the only thing I really remember was the younger bro. saying that "All the Navy ever did was take a bunch of good young men and turn them into drunks".

 

[dragoneggs]

Pearl Harbor... was a wake up call for us. We rose triumphantly. Fought bravely prior and every war since. Wholesale support has dwindled each decade though. I am thankful that we have been recently striving to engage peacefully with strategic injections of force. WWWIII is not the solution, obviously.

Please give your vociferous thanks and well wishes to our troops abroad this holiday season.

 

[Frankenkubota]

My uncle was in the navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor but was not on board when it hit the fan. He survived.

50 years later I'm in HI on business, honest, and it was Sunday and I was bored so, why not go see Pearl harbor.

I asked the hotel guy how to go about seeing Pearl Harbor. I had a rental car and was all alone so no problem on my end.

He looked at me like I was nuts, more than normal. Then he asked me if I knew the date, I said no but I knew it was Sunday.

He said, not only is it December 7th, it's 2001 and it's the 60 anniversary of the attack and guess what, it's gonna be packed!

I went the next time, it's cool.

 

[oosik]

My father & uncle were both in WWll. Neither would talk about this time in their lives.

 

[nybirdman]

My father was stationed at Pearl Harbor for two years,I believe for the rebuild;strangely my birthday is Dec.7 but 1949.

 

[reb]

My uncle was stationed at Pearl Harbor then. He survived. He also survived the sinking of two ships later in the war.

It is sad that apparently the Pearl Harbor attack is no longer mentioned in schools.

 

[MossRoad]

My father was in college his sophomore year when he got drafted soon after the war started and ended up in Texas, Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines. Combat engineering battalion. He said New Guinea was the most interesting; if the Japanese didn't kill you, the jungle would. He worked with the native peoples quite a bit. He had a bunch of photographs of everything, however, he gave them to a museum without asking us if we'd like some copies. He talked about it quite a bit with us over his life, but more detailed as we all got older. He said a day didn't go by where he didn't think of it well into his 70s when he passed away.