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Pearl Harbor Attack News Report: An Update in 1942

“Will cast its shadow on Nippon’s very shores.”

A live news report as the attack is going on.

“Once again, like it’s 1940 all over again,

we have the weakest, most inept, hollow, incapable, and underwhelmingly weak land, sea, and air forces of any time since that day.

Once again, we’ve let a pipsqueak nation from the region get to a position of being able to threaten our interests and our national safety, largely through disinterest and pure chicken-shitted short-sightedness in our nominal leadership.

And once again, we’ve forgotten the proper way to deal with intransigent militant religious fanatics, by explaining our side of the argument to them by the kiloton, using the White Ball Of Enlightenment.

Mark my words: because of our national policy of head-up-the-ass stupidity and a national memory shorter than the presidency of William Henry Harrison, we’ll end up having to surge up a massive war machine, rebuild a massive naval fleet, re-learn large-scale amphibious assault and island-hopping tactics, get involved in another land war in Asia, and pop nukes on cities to get certain peoples’ attention, and settle the argument. All over again.” Raconteur Report: How Quickly We Forget

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  • Gordon December 7, 2017, 12:46 PM

    Back on Dec. 7, 1941, my grandfather and my uncle, both namesakes of mine, were hunting sandhill cranes way out of town in eastern New Mexico. When the news of the attack came on the radio, my grandmother made some calls and headed for the office of the newspaper, published by her husband, and edited by her brother. She rounded up enough of the staff to get the Linotype going, and the type set for the first of three EXTRA! editions that Sunday. She had one staffer drive up to Clovis, because that larger paper had a United Press teletype, so that guy brought back more copy.

    That was the first, and last, extra editions that newspaper ever did. By the time my grandfather and uncle returned, she had sent the staff back home and shut down the office. Her mother, a tiny thing whom I never got to meet, once faced down a huge kid with a knife in the one-room school she taught. I come from tough stock.

  • Casey Klahn December 7, 2017, 5:30 PM

    The picture of the veteran at the end of the post tells the whole story. Remember. Remember with emotions of grief and of flushed pride. My father. My father. The Greatest Generation.
    If needed, we will have to take on Kim’s Korea. My prayer day and night is no; my manhood says yes, if we must. I am certain God shakes his head in regret, disquiet, and disgust, that a war would again be waged for human emotions that somehow we should be too big to feel.
    It will be a biggie, that you’ll have to digest and make no mistake. My military mind searches for the scenario and predictions of what takes place first, then second, then, then… That all depends on the very first moves. Kim must have his sovereignty, and continued communist governance. We must have the end of nuclear forces in North Korea, and the counter to Kim: no more communist state on the Korean peninsula. If war breaks out, that is. If it is contained, by nothing less than God’s hand of mercy, then we can be happy with containment of Kim’s nuclear arms growth. Time is on our side, because communism is on the wane worldwide. Communism must grow to survive (a capital fact).
    The whole world remembers how America dominated the world after 1941. Our GDP was greater than the entire Allied and Axis powers by 1945. We produced more war material than all the allies put together by 1945. We: one does not fuck with us. That much is known.

  • Gordon December 7, 2017, 8:08 PM

    Heh. In Martin van Creveld’s Hitler in Hell, the author quotes the Fuehrer looking back on the war. Hitler says the Germans called the Sherman tank the Ronson, as they could always count on lighting it up. But he said Germany ran out of shells before the Allies ran out of Shermans.

  • Callmlenniee December 8, 2017, 5:47 AM

    Wow! Numerous inaccuracies in that report. Not necessarily for propaganda purposes, but due to a fundamental ignorance of military matters. They seem to believe that it was the midget subs that wreaked so much havoc, when in actuality it was fighter bombers modified to drop a single torpedo. The ships sitting in a narrow waterway were helpless against this tactic.

    They also believe that it was the Arizona’s fuel oil that exploded, and not the gunpowder in its magazine. You’d have to be completely ignorant of all things military to believe that fuel oil could tear apart a battleship. In their defense, it would seem, at first glance, to be a possible explanation as the actual reason would also have been considered highly implausible. What was unknown at the time was that the bomb that struck the Arizona was not a standard ariel bomb, which would not have penetrated the Arizona’s deck, but a 15 in artillery shell from a battleship which had armor piercing capability.

    One last bit of inaccuracy, which may have been intentional, was the idea that the crew of the Arizona shook off the assault and fought back, which is sadly not true. Almost everyone on the AZ was killed instantly

  • Mike Austin December 7, 2022, 3:17 PM

    An acquaintance in college had served as a USMC honor guard for the USS Arizona in the early 1970s. While on duty one day a group of Japanese tourists asked him where the Arizona was. He replied, “Right where you left it.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFkheHGraCM

    The Japanese Empire from 1905 – 1945 was without question one of the most bestial, monstruous and terrifying nations in History. It ranks with the Aztecs and the Assyrians in its murderous brutality of anyone it encountered. The Americans after Pearl thought of the Japanese as super soldiers; that is, we thought of the Japanese as they thought of themselves. After we began to engage them on land in the Pacific—the first island was Guadalcanal in August of 1942—we realized we could kill them at will. And we did so, maintaining a kill ratio of between 5:1 and 22:1 throughout the war.

    Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely necessary to extinguish forever the militant, totalitarian militarism of Japanese culture. I can hardly stand Truman, but he got this one right.

    • james wilson December 8, 2022, 12:42 AM

      No doubt the professional soldier was a fanatic, but I have long been convinced that the Japanese recruit was more terrified of what was behind him than what lay before him. And rightly so. What looked like fanaticism was fear cooked to madness.

      • Mike Austin December 8, 2022, 3:01 AM

        I just finished the first two volumes of a planned trilogy by John C. McManus of a history of the US Army in the Pacific Theater. He goes into great detail concerning the training of the Japanese recruits. It was exactly what you described. Basic Training for the Japanese Imperial Army most closely resembled the 13 years of training required for every Spartan boy between the ages of 7 and 20 under the Lycurgan Constitution. It was said that the Spartans were so willing to die because their training in Sparta was so harsh.

        We took very few Japanese prisoners. Almost all soldiers preferred death to the shame of surrender. Usually when the battle was lost, the surviving Japanese soldiers would simply charge American lines in a fruitless “banzai” attack, there to be mowed down to the last man, the officers in charge staying behind to commit “seppuku”.

        “Fear cooked to madness” well describes this Japanese insanity.

  • Dan Patterson December 7, 2022, 3:34 PM

    The America then is not the America now. America of the day was recovering from stubbornly stupid monetary policy and was yet to make the move to economic security. Technology was universally analog without today’s instant global reach, half the population was rural and small town, and America was insulated from international affairs by oceans and philosophy. The push by Japan to conquer neighboring Pacific nations was driven by the needs of a rapidly growing population and rampant industrialization; aggressive military actions against China underscored public sentiment against Japan further complicating import possibilities. Restrictive tariffs from the West throttled trade and were an instrument for punishment of sorts against Japanese plans for expansion. The tariffs did not produce their desired results, but made things much worse. So Japan saw an opportunity and took it. The world would forever be changed.

    And the America today would be unrecognizable to men of WWII. Oh it can be brought back, but to do so will require a tectonic movement of national character, and a return to hairy testosterone motivation. Females start many a fight but it is men that end them.

    The US military of the 1930s and into the war was inept, poorly prepared, and poorly equipped. Compared to the Germans and Japanese it was as effective as the Boy Scouts. It would take many losing battles, paid for with the blood of many men, and many try-and-see attempts before corrections were made. Success depended on luck to an alarming degree even late in the war.

    The survivor of Pearl Harbor is in shock. I suppose any of us would be that or worse given his experience. And his shock is magnified by the giant difference between the America he knew in, say, the summer of 1940, and what he was thrust into on December 7th, 1941, Nothing would ever be the same, nothing would ever be safe like it once was, nothing would be hopeful and optimistic. The safety of the oceans and of yesterday’s philosophy had been pierced, replaced by the gloom and doubt we swim in today.

    God bless those men of December 7th, 1941. The ones that died on station, the ones that perished below decks days and weeks later, the ones unrecovered. All of them, each and every one. If interviewed an hour before the attack I doubt any of them would want violent conflict, but would prefer to live their lives in peace, with hope for a long and happy life. But that decision had been made for them years before. The old veteran in the photo is showing us the price paid by survivors.

  • Dave Jenkins December 7, 2022, 5:06 PM

    I’ve stood in the harbor and on the slopes above the north shore, gazing into the northern sky wondering what it must have been like to hear and see their planes approach. RIP those that did so on that fateful day.

  • Dirk December 8, 2022, 6:52 AM

    I made a point of watching MSM yesterday, a sort of experiment. I heard FOX, mention Pearl Harbor day, exactly one time. I did not here Pearl Harbor day mention further.

    To change a nation a world, it’s history MUST be erased!

    Only one way thru this, buy yourself the tools we’re gonna need. It’s a win win, if your too cowardly to shoot communists in the face, do us a favor and turn the tool on yourself. Save us from having to track you down.

    When You Speak The Language Of Your Enemy,,,,,,, You Have Become,,,,,, THEM.