Lest We Forget

[.455_Hunter]

Putting into perspective that the lives lost aboard the Arizona only totaled about half of the casualties that day the loss of life really was tragic.

The magazine explosion was brutal. Rear Admiral Kidd, the highest ranking officer killed in the attack, assumed his duty station on the bridge of the Arizona (Flagship of Battleship Division One) with Captain Van Valkenburgh. An aerial bomb also directly struck the bridge, resulting in it's total distruction. The only remains of Admiral Kidd recovered was his Annapolis Class Ring fused to a bulkhead.

[Aloha_Shooter]

My father watched the Japanese planes overhead from the roof of his home in Kaimuki. My grandfather was admitting patients at Queens Hospital -- fact we only found out after he died when my mother happened to see the entry book for Dec 7 on display in the hotel lobby and recognized his signature.

[JohnnyDrama]

I've visited the Arizona Memorial twice. Very somber occasions. I've had those memories in my head a lot today.

[Seamonkey]

I was in the Navy and did a Westpac. Pearl Harbor was the 1st and last stop.
A couple of us were leaving the base after finally being let off the ship and some Japanese tourists asked us "Where is the Arizona?"
BM3 Rodgers replied "Right where you f*ing left it"

We sailed past Iwo Jima. Such a tiny speck of land for 26,000 of ours and 19,000 of theirs to die for.

[Seamonkey]

While the memorial that I visited in Scottsdale for the USS Arizona didn?t quite have the same somber vibe as the memorial at Pearl Harbor, they had one feature that helped visualize the loss of life just on the Arizona that day.

They had these lighted poles that represented each person on the ship that day. An overwhelming number of the poles were roughly six or so feet in length with a very few really short poles scattered randomly amongst them. The tall poles represent each person that lost their life that day and the small number of short poles were for those who survived.

Hearing the numbers is one thing but seeing those lives represented the way they did it really brought those numbers into perspective.

Putting into perspective that the lives lost aboard the Arizona only totaled about half of the casualties that day the loss of life really was tragic.

The Viet Nam memorial has that impact on me with the names listed.

The WWII memorial has gold stars that represent called "Field of Stars". Each star represents 100 American Military deaths. Stunned me. (if you visit, you must try to find kilroy without google)
https://www.nps.gov/articles/ww2memorialguide.htm
https://wwiimemorial.com/Pictures.aspx

https://www.nps.gov/places/https-www...y-was-here.htm

There's a memorial to the Bataan death march in Las Cruces, NM called "Heroes of Bataan". There are numerous footprints in concrete leading up to the statue and only a few going forward from the statue. From my understanding this is to represent the large number who started the march and the fewer who finished it. Those leaving the statue are footprints from survivors.
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=38293

This site has a picture you can move around to "see" the memorial -- https://www.360cities.net/hd/image/h...ces-new-mexico

[theGinsue]

But don't you all know, the people/nation of Japan were the victims....

History of the Pearl Harbor attack taught in the United States through the 20th century:
Beginning at 7:48AM on Sunday, December 7, 1941 the Japanese began an unprovoked attacked on Pearl Harbor, HI. This attack killed 2,403 and injured another 1,246 military personnel and civilians. This attack was nothing less than senseless aggression and a war crime.

History of the Pearl Harbor attack taught in the United States since the start of the 21st century:
Fearful of the continuing expansion into and colonization of the Pacific Islands by the expansionist Americans, on December 7th the people of Japan launched a preemptive strike against the United States. The people of Japan tired of living under the constant threat posed by the United States and felt their only solution was to proactively end America's aggression. Their efforts were ultimately fruitless as the United States brutally slaughtered thousands of Pacific Islanders and Japanese. Their brutality knew no bounds when they brought the peaceful people of Japan to their knees by dropping two atomic weapons on Japanese citizens killing as many as 226,000 people.


This is the sort of re-writing of history that is causing us so much anguish. They say that history is written by the victors and right now, the "victors" are the far-left that seek to destroy all we have and show through their re-education efforts and historical re-writes how bad we are as a people and why it's so important to "fundamentally transform" America.

Personally, I wish Japan hadn't been so foolish to poke a sleeping giant. Had they been wiser and less arrogant about their believed superiority, many lives could have been saved on both sides of the war.

[Joe_K]

Such a great tragedy, and one that was certainly avoidable, or at the very least could have been mitigated to reduce the amount of lives lost.
I will never forget.
I will never stop working to expose the decades of propaganda we have ALL been fed.

At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals don?t shout that We need lots of battleships to war on this nation or that nation. Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate our 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
?The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline in the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon?s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern, through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.

- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler USMC Ret. circa 1935

https://www.foxtv.com/news/3-decades...-went-unheeded

https://christianhistoryinstitute.or...an-evangelist/

https://youtu.be/C2QUm__QvcA

[wctriumph]

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...19111f1bebb63M

What ever happened to the officer that ignored the warning report of the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor?

That officer was Kermit Tyler. He received the report of aircraft approaching Pearl Harbor and told the privates reporting the radar images not to worry.

To familiarize pursuit pilots with the new radar systems being installed around the Hawaiian Islands, Army Air Forces Major Kenneth P. Bergquist, the operations officer for the Hawaiian Interceptor Command, arranged to have the various pursuit groups based in Hawai’i send pilots to the information center at Fort Shafter in Honolulu to work shifts with the air information controllers. The job of the controllers was to process and track reports coming into the center from the Signal Aircraft Warning Service radar stations which were positioned around the islands.

Kermit Tyler’s turn to learn this new technology came during the first week of December 1941. Not a good time. At 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 3, Tyler arrived for his first four-hour shift in the information center. Officially, his job there was to assist the controllers in vectoring pursuit aircraft to meet any identified incoming enemy threats, however, he was really there to learn about this new process and how it worked. Though he had received a brief orientation in mid-November, Tyler received no training before, during, or after his first shift and nothing of note occurred during that first four hours. In other words, he was totally inexperienced. Therefore, when Tyler showed up to work his second shift at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, he had no reason to think that morning would be any different. How wrong he was.

At 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Tyler opened the air information center at Fort Shafter. In the center with him that morning was roughly a half dozen enlisted men. He was the only officer present. The first three hours of that morning’s four-hour shift passed by uneventfully. The radar stations positioned around the islands would all shut down at 7:00 a.m. So Tyler in the information center did not expect to receive any calls during the last hour of the shift.

According to Tyler, at approximately 7:15 a.m., the information center received a call from the Opana Radar Station located in the north end of O’ahu. The radar technicians on duty that morning, Army Privates Joseph Lockard and George Elliott Jr., reported the “largest blip they had ever seen” on their SCR-270 radar’s oscilloscope. The course they reported the incoming contact on was almost a direct line between San Francisco and O’ahu. Hearing that, and recalling that he had heard Hawaiian music playing without interruption a few hours earlier, Tyler reasoned that the blip the radar technicians were seeing was not an enemy formation, but was instead a flight of friendly bombers approaching O’ahu from San Francisco which were expected. Tyler told Lockard and Elliott not to worry about what they were seeing.

Shortly after talking to Tyler, Lockard and Elliott went off duty. History has shown what happened next. At 7:55 a.m., approximately 53 minutes after the “blip” representing the Japanese attack aircraft had been seen on the SCR-270 radar’s oscilloscope, and 40 minutes after Tyler told Lockard and Elliott not to worry about what they were seeing, the attack on Pearl Harbor began. The Japanese assault left thousands dead, caused millions of dollars in damage, and catapulted the United States into World War II. But what happened to Kermit Tyler after December 7, 1941? Was he court martialled?

Beginning shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Tyler was called before several boards of inquiry to account for his actions on the morning of December 7, 1941, the first being the Roberts Commission. He was later called to appear before boards of inquiry set up by both the Army and Navy. All of the boards Tyler went before found that he had not been derelict or negligent in his duties and was not culpable for the results of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Most focused on the fact he had no training.

[BushMasterBoy]

The US sanctioned an oil embargo on Japan. FDR was behind it. The US only entered the war with Germany after OSS found out that Nazi Germany was planning a V-3 rocket attack on New York city with a nuclear weapon.
I'm sure these files are classified still today. Anything that is embarrassing is classified.



Per Ardua ad Astra

[arbol]

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...19111f1bebb63M

What ever happened to the officer that ignored the warning report of the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor?

That officer was Kermit Tyler. He received the report of aircraft approaching Pearl Harbor and told the privates reporting the radar images not to worry.

To familiarize pursuit pilots with the new radar systems being installed around the Hawaiian Islands, Army Air Forces Major Kenneth P. Bergquist, the operations officer for the Hawaiian Interceptor Command, arranged to have the various pursuit groups based in Hawai’i send pilots to the information center at Fort Shafter in Honolulu to work shifts with the air information controllers. The job of the controllers was to process and track reports coming into the center from the Signal Aircraft Warning Service radar stations which were positioned around the islands.

Kermit Tyler’s turn to learn this new technology came during the first week of December 1941. Not a good time. At 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 3, Tyler arrived for his first four-hour shift in the information center. Officially, his job there was to assist the controllers in vectoring pursuit aircraft to meet any identified incoming enemy threats, however, he was really there to learn about this new process and how it worked. Though he had received a brief orientation in mid-November, Tyler received no training before, during, or after his first shift and nothing of note occurred during that first four hours. In other words, he was totally inexperienced. Therefore, when Tyler showed up to work his second shift at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, he had no reason to think that morning would be any different. How wrong he was.

At 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Tyler opened the air information center at Fort Shafter. In the center with him that morning was roughly a half dozen enlisted men. He was the only officer present. The first three hours of that morning’s four-hour shift passed by uneventfully. The radar stations positioned around the islands would all shut down at 7:00 a.m. So Tyler in the information center did not expect to receive any calls during the last hour of the shift.

According to Tyler, at approximately 7:15 a.m., the information center received a call from the Opana Radar Station located in the north end of O’ahu. The radar technicians on duty that morning, Army Privates Joseph Lockard and George Elliott Jr., reported the “largest blip they had ever seen” on their SCR-270 radar’s oscilloscope. The course they reported the incoming contact on was almost a direct line between San Francisco and O’ahu. Hearing that, and recalling that he had heard Hawaiian music playing without interruption a few hours earlier, Tyler reasoned that the blip the radar technicians were seeing was not an enemy formation, but was instead a flight of friendly bombers approaching O’ahu from San Francisco which were expected. Tyler told Lockard and Elliott not to worry about what they were seeing.

Shortly after talking to Tyler, Lockard and Elliott went off duty. History has shown what happened next. At 7:55 a.m., approximately 53 minutes after the “blip” representing the Japanese attack aircraft had been seen on the SCR-270 radar’s oscilloscope, and 40 minutes after Tyler told Lockard and Elliott not to worry about what they were seeing, the attack on Pearl Harbor began. The Japanese assault left thousands dead, caused millions of dollars in damage, and catapulted the United States into World War II. But what happened to Kermit Tyler after December 7, 1941? Was he court martialled?

Beginning shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Tyler was called before several boards of inquiry to account for his actions on the morning of December 7, 1941, the first being the Roberts Commission. He was later called to appear before boards of inquiry set up by both the Army and Navy. All of the boards Tyler went before found that he had not been derelict or negligent in his duties and was not culpable for the results of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Most focused on the fact he had no training.

It takes a team to succeed, and a team to fail.

As a witness to 9/11, I do believe that I can get a bit of the same feeling that the American People had after the attack on Pearl Harbor.