Day that Shall Live in Infamy
 

Please take a moment of your day to remember our fallen hero's who gave their lives for our freedom 66 years ago today. December 7th, 1941 is one of the defining moments of world history and the men and women who fought and perished at Pearl Harbor will never be forgotten.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/e...r/pearlhbr.htm

It's an incredible place to visit. By pure co-incidence I visited there during the 60th Anniversary events in 2001 and heard survivors tell their stories of the day before getting on the boat to visit the Arizona. Not to be overly dramatic, but it's a must see if you can

Couldn't agree more. The history is amazing and it is definitely a place that everyone needs to visit and see. My wife and I were taken back by it and I will definitely never forget what happened there and what I saw. Besides after you go there head out to the north shore of oahu...

The sad part is that this is the first place that I have seen any mention of it. Nothing on TV, radio or in the newspapers. But there is plenty of coverage of the Grammy nominations that came out yesterday. This country is so F'd up sometimes!

Well, it is pretty important to me that both Feist and Taylor Swift are up for Best New Artist -- but I noticed the same thing. I've been sitting by a TV on news stations all morning and have yet to hear a word about it, though I am now an expert on mall shootings and Mitt Romney's religion.

God Bless the fallen heroes and the few still living.

I sat in Barnes and Noble on Sunday morning, picked up this book and read it for a couple hours. If you are a history buff and love this kind of stuff, I highly recommend it. I put it on my Christmas list.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...07262837&itm=1

Amen

The front page of The St. Pete Times this morning...

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/07/ti...t/Times_1A.pdf

My wife's father flew 20+ missions in the Pacific as a ball turret gunner. He was the guy who sat in a steel cage attached to the bottom of the plane and fired a machine gun. For added protection, he made his own "body armor" using tin cans and a rivet gun.

We went with him in 2005 to a WW2 Veterans event. Amazing to meet these people and hear their stories.

God bless them all.

That is some picture. That along with 9/11 are historic events that IMO, people should be reminded daily of. I remember when I was a kid before cable TV, every night the TV stations would sign off with the national anthem. I think that all stations should show some sort of remeberence/salute to the troops every night. It only has to be a minute or two (say at 11:00 before the news). It could be either the nation anthem or God Bless America with footage of Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and then a salute to all active, retired and troops who gave there all. Those two things changed this country and people should be reminded daily that there are people out there that hate us our country and what we stand for. Maybe people will realize how good they have it.

I'm an NPR dork and they had coverage on this event this morning.

One thing that they spoke of, was that the nurses could do nothing to help all the fallen due to the mass numbers so they ran about administering morphine to every fallen person labeling them with an M in lipstick so as not to overmedicate.

Even though the majority are probably gone by now, I would still like to say thank you for all you did....and this is the only place so far today I have heard this. Thank you for starting this thread...

It was mentioned on the radio station I listen to, and if ever there was a station more likely to be obsessed with the Grammys, it would be this one(Z100). But they brought it up. One of the DJs on the show is in his 70s and talked about sitting next to the radio with his parents, listening to FDR's famous speech.

In fact, here's a link to the "a date which will live in infamy" speech, including an audio link so you can hear it (plus some other audio links from that event):

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5166/

For that,Batan,and the rape of the Phillipines etc.,we should of turned their island into glass.All those innocent guys still in that U.S.S. Arizona.......That country never paid what was due for their disgusting ways.

Thanks for reminding me. My dad served in the South Pacific during the war. Truly the "greatest generation."

Didn't we drop two rather large, destructive bombs on Japan, or am I thinking of another Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Didn't the radiation from those bombs continue to cause illness and death decades after the war ended?

How many of those people who died, do you think, were directly, or even indirectly, involved in the attacks on a US military base in 1941? Those people we burned to death were civilians. Here's a description of what many of them looked like:

<<They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from the front or in back.... If there had been only one or two such people ... perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people.... Many of them died along the road.... They didn't look like people of this world.>>

And:
<<The river became not a stream of flowing water but rather a stream of drifting dead bodies. No matter how much I might exaggerate the stories of the burned people who died shrieking and of how the city of Hiroshima was burned to the ground, the facts would still be clearly more terrible.>>

I'm not defending Japan in WW2, God knows. In fact, I even understand why Truman made the decision to drop the bombs. But to say the Japanese didn't pay what was due? Jesus Christ. How bloodthirsty can a person get?

Here's a good link to Truman's decision to drop the bomb and the aftermath:

http://www.isreview.org/issues/13/Hi...Nagasaki.shtml

Sorry Scuds- I don't mean to sound harsh, but come on, really?

My Grandma visited the memorial in the early 70's, the oil from the USS Arizona still rises to the surface even today.

for those that get it, military channel is running some shows now but 6pm they start their evening coverage. history channel also doing some shows tonight.

i have 1 uncle that was an army air corp engineer on a PBY subhunter in the atlantic. another that was in an artillery crew, that went from normandy to the outskirts of berlin. they have not told any stories until recently.

Tidefans.com has a thread today under the football section, even has some guys in iraq now posting in the thread.

THANK YOU! to our servicemen and women past and present!

HBO had a doucumentry on a few months ago. I believed it was called Black Rain (I could be wrong but it was somthing Rain). They interviewed people that lived through the bombings and they described what happened and what they saw. There were also amazing (mostly disturbing) photos of the bomb and the damage that it did to the people and the land. After watching that show, no one will ever casually say "let's just drop the bomb on them".

Question:
I was told by a high school history teacher that on Dec 6, 1941, the entire US Pacific fleet was assembled in one place for only the first and ever time.
Coincidentally, negotiations with Japanese diplomats in Washington DC had "broken down".
The carriers left port (Pearl Harbor) that day, and the following morning, we know what happened, though warnings from spotters we ignored.
So...Did FDR set it up to get the USA into WWII? Like, "here's your shot, Japan, have at it."

ps: My father was an officer that served in the South Pacific as an engineer (building landing fields). Two purple hearts, malaria, jungle rot, and nightmares for many many years after.
He was one of the greatest generation. I miss him every day. He also shared this question, and said the only thing that spared the US from defeat in the Pacific was the Panama Canal.