The Attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise aerial attack largely on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, and the USA launched by the 1st Air Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy of the task force Carrier Striking Task Force on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. It was aimed at the Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy and its defending Army Air Corps and Marine defensive squadrons as preemptive war intended to neutralize the American forces in the Pacific in an impending World War II. Pearl Harbor was actually only one of several military and naval installations which were attacked, including those on the other side of the island.
Of 8 American battleships in the harbor, the attack resulted in 1 destroyed, 2 sunk at their moorings, 1 capsized, 1 beached and 3 damaged but afloat.
While the Oklahoma, which had capsized, was righted, she was never repaired. Additionally, the attack severely damaged 9 other warships, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,403 Americans: 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians.
It took the United States four years to bring Japan to the surrender table. Though there was dissension in the country during WWII, there was never a lack of resolve. There were questions as to whether or not intelligence failures had contributed to the Japanese success, but never any questions as to whether or not we should fight until victory was achieved. No one demanded that we negotiate with Japan and Germany to find a way out. Nobody was screaming for an “exit strategy” We didn’t have “journalists” doing their daily tally of civilian casualties to emphasize how evil the US forces were. To the contrary, during WWII news sources were eager to report American successes.
Not so today.
I can say little more on this that you don’t already know.
Neal Boortz says:
Back then we knew that in the Pacific theatre we knew that it was a war against the Japanese. It wasn’t a “War on Sneak Attacks.”
Today we persist on calling our fight against Islamic fascism a “War on Terror.” It is not. Terror is a tactic. You don’t declare war on tactics. You declare war on the people who are using the tactics against you. This is not a war on terror. It is a war against Islamic fascism. How the hell do you fight a war when you aren’t even willing to define just who it is you are fighting? Are we that gobbled up with political correctness that we are afraid to identify our most deadly international enemy? They attack us on our own soil and we’re afraid to name them and speak of our intent to crush them? We only speak of the tactic they used?
Emperor Misha I over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler was sufficiently able to put into words what I could not, and thusly I un-apologetically copy/paste his words here:
The fact of the matter is that today’s America couldn’t care less if it took place prior to the last commercial block on this week’s episode of “American Idol.”
But I’ll remember. I’ll remember and honor those who died on and after Pearl Harbor.
I’ll remember those who didn’t respond to Pearl Harbor with a cry of “why do they hate us?”
I’ll remember the generation that took a savage beating over and over again on battlefields all over the world, only to get back up, dust themselves off, grit their teeth and get back in the fight because “it ain’t over ’till it’s over, no matter what it takes.”
I’m grateful to you for keeping up the fight until the end. I’m grateful to you for NOT responding to the opening of the Battle of the Bulge with screams of “quagmire” and demands for exit strategies and redeployments over the horizon.
I’m grateful that your response to Iwo Jima WASN’T to establish a Japan Study Group with the task of figuring out the best way of surrendering to the Axis.
…
And I’m profoundly sorry that your children, the generation that you sacrificed so much for, turned out to be a bunch of sniveling, whiny, self-indulgent, cowardly pissants not worth projectile vomiting on if their crotches were on fire.
Thatisall.
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
