Eagle Kammback
Ex-Soldier
It was a quiet Sunday morning three weeks before Christmas.
The people on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands chain were preparing for a quiet day of relaxation. The stillness was shattered early.
At 7:48 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the skies over Pearl Harbor were thickened with clouds — clouds that were the warplanes of the Japanese Empire. Less than three hours after the attack force withdrew to the aircraft carriers from which they came, more than 3,400 Americans were dead — more than 2,300 military personnel and more than 50 civilians. Japanese military deaths were estimated to number fewer than 70.
A day later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt — calling on Congress for a declaration of war against Japan — called the brutal attack "a day which will live in infamy."
Generational memories are short. Our country pledged to never forget such horror as was perpetrated from the skies over Oahu, but forget we do, at least until next reminded.
History does not stop with the events of one generation. The book has pages without number awaiting the historian's pen.
The people on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands chain were preparing for a quiet day of relaxation. The stillness was shattered early.
At 7:48 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the skies over Pearl Harbor were thickened with clouds — clouds that were the warplanes of the Japanese Empire. Less than three hours after the attack force withdrew to the aircraft carriers from which they came, more than 3,400 Americans were dead — more than 2,300 military personnel and more than 50 civilians. Japanese military deaths were estimated to number fewer than 70.
A day later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt — calling on Congress for a declaration of war against Japan — called the brutal attack "a day which will live in infamy."
Generational memories are short. Our country pledged to never forget such horror as was perpetrated from the skies over Oahu, but forget we do, at least until next reminded.
History does not stop with the events of one generation. The book has pages without number awaiting the historian's pen.
