re: 84 years ago, lest we forget

Empty platitudes I’m afraid.

Today there will be Islamic call to prayer in Michigan. You have to press 1 for English and at the grocery store an EBT recipient will be waddling around the aisles with a buggy full of corn syrup. Later this Christmas season there will be drag queen shows.

I can’t help but wonder what we really accomplish by remembering these events. It doesn’t seem to have done much to change the course of our country for the better as time marched on.

Just one of many enormous intelligence failures by the US.

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So who were the multiple people who completely ignored the warnings and reports and kept us from defending against the attack?

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It's not that they completely ignored the warnings or the reports, it's that they were misinterpreted based on outdated military thinking and incorrect assumptions. We knew the Japanese's 1st Carrier Fleet was missing but we had no idea where they were or where they were going. Most of the brass figured the target was either our bases in the Philippines or the British and Dutch colonies in southeast Asia. While there were those within the chain of command who thought very seriously that Pearl Harbor could be a target, most were dismissed because those above them in the chain thought the logistics of such an attack too difficult for the Japanese to pull off.

And then you had the breakdown in communication on the morning of the attack. Radar spotted the first wave of Japanese aircraft moving in from the north but mid-level commanders interpreted this as friendly aircraft en route from California and didn't bother passing this information up the chain. You also had the depth charging and sinking of Japanese midget submarines right outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor that didn't reach Admiral Kimmel's ears until almost 45 minutes after it had happened. By that time Japanese bombers and torpedo planes were only 40 minutes away fro beginning their assault.

It was just a cascade of failures made possible by, as a poster said above, the failure of imagination.

My great uncle Robert was a survivor. He died in 1989.

He was a very interesting and funny man.

The things I remember most about him was his navy tattoos on both his forearms , his cussing like a sailor, how he was always dressed up to the nines and him always having a pack of camel no filters in his shirt pocket.

And the day he got mad at my great grandmother for inviting a “Jap” in her house who was selling vacuum cleaners.

<——Has a distant cousin still serving aboard the Arizona

We/FDR knew it was coming. Thousands of lives lost….

Just read some trivia this week about the Pearl Harbor attack: there were 3 civilian airplanes that were shot down that day. 2 of them were private airplanes being used by 2 service members who were doing some recreational flying on their down time. Can you imagine going for a little spin, and then seeing the sky fill with Zeros? Damn.

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different breed of folks back then

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I have not had the opportunity to visit Pearl Harbor yet, but it is definitely a trip that I have to take at some point. If nothing else, I want to pay my respects to those that perished there.

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Wife and I went on our honeymoon because we were there and I’m a history nerd. I wasn’t expecting to get as emotional as I did. You really feel what happened when you visit that spot