Let Us Remember
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28 responses to “Let Us Remember”
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My future mom and dad were on a date, watching Gone with the Wind in Bluefield, W.VA. when the theater manager stopped the show and made the announcement. Dad then spent that night driving up to and back from Quantico, because his older brother’s leave was cancelled and all Marines were ordered to report ASAP.
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My father was hitchhiking from Chapel Hill (UNC) to Danville (Averitt) when news came over the radio. The next day, he received a telegram from his father: “Don’t do anything rash.” There were six boys in that family, plus their father. All of the boys, except the youngest, went into uniform, and my grandfather did, too. He shipped out in 1917, so it was his second go-round. P.S. Dad did marry Mom, and perhaps that is what my grandfather was referring to!
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Never forget. God bless America👍🙏✝️🇺🇸
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My dad was a teenager working at a gas station when he heard the news. Neither he nor my grandmother was exactly sure where Pearl Harbor was. But my dad (Navy) and one of his brothers (Marines) soon found out. My other uncle (USAAC) went to England, while my youngest uncle was too young to serve.
I once worked for a guy who was a low-level staff officer for Admiral Halsey and lived through the attack. Sadly, my boss passed away in the 1990s.
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Okay, I’ll bite. Let the record reflect that Nancy Know-it-All has uploaded an artist’s impression of South Carolina’s bombardment of Fort Sumpter. By doing so, she is conflating the Japanese surprise attack (thousands of Americans killed, the Navy’s battleships largely destroyed) with the shelling of Fort Sumpter by the Citadel cadets (not a surprise bombardment, no one killed). Or, perhaps, she is comparing Americans to those slanty-eyed Japs? Miss Nancy Know-it-All, please enlighten us. Show us that Pearl Harbor means something more to you than your warped point of view.
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Yeah, not sure what HIS point was in all that (not actually a female…). Maybe that the aggressor on that day also came a cropper.
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12-7 4 years of war
9-11. 20 years of war
1-6 meh.No bang. Just a whimper.
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Yep. Young folks remember 9-11 way more than 12-7…….
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Actually the terrorists’ war against the US started well before that Tuesday in September, 2001. But most people are ignorant of that.
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Well, how far back would you like to go? But then, we didn’t go to war over Klinghoffer.
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I merely pointed out that your ‘start’ of the war against AQ was incorrect. The first US deaths by that terrorist group was years before. Facts are important.
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And our first strike against them occurred long before too. But our “boots on the ground with imbedded correspondents” began after 9-11.
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On Dec. 7, 1941, my Dad w was in medical school in Boston. Curiously, he was then a reserve lieutenant in the Marines. As an undergrad, he spent summers at Quantico and became and officer. Then he was accepted into medical school. The Marines made a deal. He would keep his commission, go to drills and when he became a doctor, the Marines would fix him up with a Navy commission and he’d do his military service with the Marines. In 1944, he went off to combat as a battalion surgeon with a Marine amphibious tank unit. One of his older brothers, my late uncle Bruno, was also a doctor and he ended up in the Army in Europe serving under Gen. George Patton. My Dad retired from the Navy in 1962. He did not go to Korea but ran a training program for Navy doctors and corpsmen at Camp Lejeune.
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Hats off to the medical personnel. Think for example of the recently deceased Bob Dole, saved in 1945 by docs who sadly had too much experience by then….75 years of additional life well used.
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This is a great story, Peter. My mother’s only brother had already graduated from med school, and was living in West Virginia where he was employed by a coal mine. It seems hard to believe now, but that is all he could find. He was called up, entered the army, and participated in the North African, Italian, and European campaigns. He was wounded once. Eventually he returned to a small-town practice in the Valley, and in the next 40 years he delivered 7,000 babies! And he was doing all of that as a family practice doc!
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Did your uncle practice inHarrisonburg ?
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I guess, depending on your politics, it STILL is a day that will live in infamy even though Japan is now a stalwart ally of the US that we
much need in that part of the world.
And Pearl Harbor as horrible as it was, was just one of several battles with the Japanese that were also horrible.
Most have managed to put that mostly behind us.
I’m sure Japan has a version of Dec 7 for the atom bomb.
That’s what it took to beat them… something even more terrible.. than
their tactics…
Dad was already in the Navy. Transfered to flight school, washed out because he really sucked at judging speed and distance, so back to the battleship (South Dakota) he went. Just as well.
Uncle joined Army Air Corps immediately after, flew P-38s in New Guinea. Was with Lucky Lindy when he got his kill, after which the gub’mint freaked out and pulled Lindy home.
My late father-in-law was on the USS St. Louis at Pearl Harbor when the
attack occurred. She was the first ship to get out of Pearl Harbor
after the attack.
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Sank a Japanese minisub too, if I recall.
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had a storied career until it got sold to Brazil…. then….
A number of years ago, my son’s Boy Scout troop spent the night on the Coast Guard cutter f/k/a USS Roger B. Taney, berthed in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It was in Honolulu Harbor at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack and deployed its anti-aircraft guns during the battle. It is the last remaining US vessel from Pearl Harbor. Half the Scouts cooked dinner and the other half cleaned up. The halves switched for breakfast. My dad laughed when I told him about the challenges of a middle-aged man using a seaman’s bunk.
My maternal grandfather was experiencing a simultaneous attack in the Philippines while Pearl Harbor was being attacked. He was injured and ended up being evacuated to Sydney, Australia aboard the S.S. Mactan, which was the last hospital ship to depart before the the U.S. abandoned the Philippines and the Japanese took over. The Mactan departed Manila Bay on December 31, 1941 and arrived in Sydney on January 27, 1942.
Here is a quote from the official Red Cross history of the voyage:
“The journey was fraught with peril. The ship had to zigzag through a maze of mines just to leave Manila Bay, following a Navy ship for guidance, and had a close call when it made a wrong turn in the darkness. The ship was infested with cockroaches, red ants, and copra beetles. Violent storms tossed the ship and drenched the patients on their cots on the decks, sheltered only by canvas. There was a fire in the engine room, and for a time those aboard prepared to abandon ship. Two wounded soldiers died from their injuries during the crossing, and a depressed Filipino soldier committed suicide by jumping overboard.”
My grandfather did not talk much about it to us, but in the late 1970s he told at least some of his story to author William L. Noyer for his 1979 book “Mactan, Ship of Destiny”.
Mr. Harvie can you share a remembrance December 7th with us?
My grandfather Whitehead was working on the Pentagon as a surveyor for the War Department in Arlington at the time. Too young for the Great War and too old for second round. Travelled all over the US building Army Air Corps airfields during the war.
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Bet my dad landed at just about every one of them during his four years with the Air Transport Command. (AKA Allergic to Combat, Army of Terrified Civilians.) Plus South America, West and North Africa, Canada and Scotland (as liaison with RCAF), Iran, the Hump into China (once), and eventually France. Literally saw the world.
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