70 years ago today fighters and bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy struck Pearl Harbor with devastating results. The damage to ships and over 2,000 sailors and civilians killed were nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who would be killed and wounded in the ensuing war between the US and Japan.
The house we have lived in for almost 8 years was originally built in 1941. I often try to imagine what it was like on that Sunday afternoon when word of the attack came by radio. It would have been a little after noon Pacific time. People would be sitting down to eat a nice Sunday dinner after sleeping late or coming back from church services. If it was not raining on that day here in Pacifica, the sun very well could have been out and it could have been a cool and a beautiful day.
The attack came about because Japan was being crippled by American economic sanctions that deprived them of oil and other commodities they needed. The Japanese government felt that a sudden and decisive "knock out blow" against the United Stated would shock American public opinion and force the US to the negotiating table and get rid of the sanctions and the US as a strategic competitor.
Ironically many senior Japanese officers had received their college or post graduate educations in the United States. They warned their superiors not to underestimate the incredible industrial capacity and toughness of the American people.
If the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor on that day there ,very likely, would have never been a war between the US and Japan. The US would have come into the war against Germany much later.
Please let us all stop and have a moment for silence for the millions of people killed during the war in the Pacific that started in the early 1930's and went until 1945.
The house we have lived in for almost 8 years was originally built in 1941. I often try to imagine what it was like on that Sunday afternoon when word of the attack came by radio. It would have been a little after noon Pacific time. People would be sitting down to eat a nice Sunday dinner after sleeping late or coming back from church services. If it was not raining on that day here in Pacifica, the sun very well could have been out and it could have been a cool and a beautiful day.
The attack came about because Japan was being crippled by American economic sanctions that deprived them of oil and other commodities they needed. The Japanese government felt that a sudden and decisive "knock out blow" against the United Stated would shock American public opinion and force the US to the negotiating table and get rid of the sanctions and the US as a strategic competitor.
Ironically many senior Japanese officers had received their college or post graduate educations in the United States. They warned their superiors not to underestimate the incredible industrial capacity and toughness of the American people.
If the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor on that day there ,very likely, would have never been a war between the US and Japan. The US would have come into the war against Germany much later.
Please let us all stop and have a moment for silence for the millions of people killed during the war in the Pacific that started in the early 1930's and went until 1945.
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