Don't Forget!

[Bo D]

On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, I was working as a reporter for the Hono­lulu Star-Bulletin. After a week of war, I wrote a story directed at Hawaii's women; I thought it would be useful for them to know what I had seen. It might help prepare them for what lay ahead. But my editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting for readers and decided not to run my article. It appears here for the first time.


For seven ghastly, confused days, we have been at war. To the women of Hawaii, it has meant a total disruption of home life, a sudden acclimation to blackout nights, terrifying rumors, fear of the unknown as planes drone overhead and lorries shriek through the streets.

The seven days may stretch to seven years, and the women of Hawaii will have to accept a new routine of living. It is time, now, after the initial confusion and terror have subsided, to sum up the events of the past week, to make plans for the future.

It would be well, perhaps, to review the events of the past seven days and not minimize the horror, to better prepare for what may come again.

I have a story to tell, as a reporter, that I think the women of Hawaii should hear. I tell it because I think it may help other women in the struggle, so they will not take the past events lightly.



I reported for work immediately on Sunday morning when the first news — Oahu is being attacked — crackled over the radio, sandwiched in a church program.

Like the rest of Hawaii, I refused to believe it. All along the sunny road to town were people just coming out of church, dogs lazy in the driveways, mynas in noisy convention.

Then, from the neighborhood called Punchbowl, I saw a formation of black planes diving straight into the ocean off Pearl Harbor. The blue sky was punctured with anti-aircraft smoke puffs. Suddenly, there was a sharp whistling sound, almost over my shoulder, and below, down on School Street. I saw a rooftop fly into the air like a pasteboard movie set.

For the first time, I felt that numb terror that all of London has known for months. It is the terror of not being able to do anything but fall on your stomach and hope the bomb won't land on you. It's the helplessness and terror of sudden visions of a ripping sensation in your back, shrapnel coursing through your chest, total blackness, maybe death.


The vision of death became reality when I was assigned to cover the emergency room of the hospital.

The first victims of the Japanese-American war were brought there on that bright Sunday morning.

Bombs were still dropping over the city as ambulances screamed off into the heart of the destruction. The drivers were blood-sodden when they returned, with stories of streets ripped up, houses burned, twisted shrapnel and charred bodies of children.

In the morgue, the bodies were laid on slabs in the grotesque positions in which they had died. Fear contorted their faces. Their clothes were blue-black from incendiary bombs. One little girl in a red sweater, barefoot, still clutched a piece of jump-rope in her hand.

Firefighters from the Hickam Air Force Base carried the victims in. The men had a red T marked on their foreheads, mute testimony of the efficiency of first-aiders in giving tetanus shots to ward off lockjaw. The body of a man with a monogrammed shirt, H.A.D., was marked DOA (dead on arrival), trundled off to make room for victims who were still breathing.

There was blood and the fear of death — and death itself — in the emergency room as doctors calmly continued to treat the victims of this new war. Interns were taping up windows to prevent them from crashing into the emergency area as bombs fell and the dead and wounded continued to arrive. I had never known that blood could be so bright red.

Returning to the city, I felt a mounting sense of fear as Honolulu began to realize that more was in the air than an Army alert.

I went to a bombed store on King Street, where I often, in times past, stopped for a Coke at the cool drug counter.

Seven little stores, including my drugstore, had nearly completely burned down. Charred, ripply walls, as high as the first story, alone remained to give any hint of where the store had been. At the smashed soda fountain was a half-eaten chocolate sundae. Scorched bonbons were scattered on the sidewalk. There were odd pieces lying in the wreckage, half-burned Christmas cards, on one, the words "Hark the Herald" still visible. There were twisted bedsprings, half-burned mattresses, cans of food, a child's blackened bicycle, a lunch box, a green raveled sweater, a Bang-Up comic book, ripped awnings.

I ran out of notepaper and reached down and picked up a charred batch of writing paper, still wet from a fire hose. There was, too, the irony of Christmas tinsel, cellophane, decorations. A burned doll, with moving eyes, singed curls and straw bonnet, like a miniature corpse, lay in the wreckage.

That Sunday after dusk there was the all-night horror of attack in the dark. Sirens shrieking, sharp, crackling police reports and the tension of a city wrapped in fear.



Then, in the nightmare of Monday and Tuesday, there was the struggle to keep normal when planes zoomed overhead and guns cracked out at an unseen enemy. There was blackout and suspicion riding the back of wild rumors:Parachutists in the hills! Poison in your food! Starvation and death were all that was left in a tourist bureau paradise.

I talked with evacuees. From Hickam, a nurse who had dropped to the floor in the hospital kitchen as machine gun bullets dotted a neat row of holes directly above her; from Schofield, a woman who wanted me to send word to her sweetheart "somewhere in Honolulu" that she was still alive; from Pearl Harbor, a nurse who wanted scraps of paper and pencil stubs to give to the boys in the hospital who had last messages they wanted sent home; a little girl named Theda who had a big doll named Nancy and who told me in a quiet voice that "Daddy was killed at Hickam."



At the office there were frantic calls from all sorts of women — housewives, stenographers, debutantes — wanting to know what they could do during the day, when husbands and brothers were away and there was nothing left but to listen to the radio and imagine that all hell had broken out on another part of the island.

It was then that I realized how important women can be in a war-torn world.

There is a job for every woman in Hawaii to do.

I discovered that when I visited the Red Cross centers, canteens, evacuee districts, the motor corps headquarters.

There is great organization in Honolulu, mapped out thoughtfully and competently by women who have had experience in World War I, who have looked ahead and foreseen the carnage of the past seven days and planned.

.........................................................


Betty McIntosh's account of the attack on Pearl Harbor went unpublished until today. Now 97, she's still sharp as a whip and speaks to The Fold's Brook Silva-Braga about what she remembers from that infamous day and her later work as a wartime spy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/honolulu-after-pearl-harbor-a-report-published-for-the-first-time-71-years-later/2012/12/06/e9029986-3d69-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html?hpid=z2

[Henry Hawk]

 
Very, very interesting....

[Locutus]

"We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve." 

-- Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

[Locutus]

How vulnerable are U.S. bases in the Pacific now?

By Toshi Yoshihara, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Toshi Yoshihara is John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own.

The Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor remains a popular, if somewhat tired, metaphor for the dangers of unpreparedness and overexposure to risk. For years analysts and policymakers have warned Americans about all kinds of new Pearl Harbors in space, cyberspace, the global financial markets, and even the earth's climate.

But the real possibility that U.S. bases in the western Pacific could once again be vulnerable to a bolt-from-the-blue military attack has occasioned little publicity or debate. Yet it should take no stretched metaphors to appreciate this emerging threat.

This time, China – armed with a large and growing arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles – is poised to reprise Pearl Harbor. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) now possesses the means, the motives, and the opportunities to deliver disabling blows against U.S. bases in Japan where the bulk of American military power in Asia is concentrated.

First consider the means. The Chinese military can now lock their crosshairs on Japan, home to the largest U.S. naval and air bases in the world. China's DF-15 ballistic missile can reach Kadena airbase in Okinawa, the hub of American airpower in Asia. The PLA's non-nuclear version of the DF-21 missile boasts the range to hit all military facilities across the entire Japanese archipelago. According to the Pentagon's 2010 annual report on the PLA, the DF-15 and the DF-21 missiles numbered over 300 and 80 respectively.

Think about Yokosuka naval base, where the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS George Washington, is permanently stationed. The DF-21s could be launched against fuel storage tanks, ammunition depots, dry docks, and pierside facilities located there. Docked warships and supply vessels fixed at their berths would be sitting ducks. Civilian and military personnel, including shipyard workers so essential to the base's main functions, could also suffer casualties in such missile raids.

Next consider the motives. China's regional missile force would facilitate what the Pentagon terms "anti-access/area denial" operations, meaning efforts to bar regional bases to U.S. reinforcements while keeping military forces already in the theater from nearing China's backyard. In effect, China hopes to erect a no-go zone across large swathes of maritime Asia.

For a local military campaign (against Taiwan, for example) to obtain its maximum effectiveness, the PLA would need to inflict substantial damage on Japanese airfields and naval facilities that are critical to U.S. air superiority and sea control, the two operational prerequisites for thwarting Chinese war aims. As such, salvoes of missile strikes to render inoperative Kadena airbase and Yokosuka naval base would likely be among the PLA's opening moves.

Crippling bases in Japan would by no means constitute a war winner for Beijing. But denying American use of bases near China would shove back the start line for U.S. warships and aircraft by thousands of kilometers to such military hubs as Guam and Hawaii. And the more distance U.S. forces must cover to reach China, the less staying power those same forces would enjoy while operating in the war zone.

Finally, opportunities beckon. Perceptions of American overdependence on forward bases could tempt the Chinese to hit first and hard. No naval base in Asia rivals Yokosuka's strategic location, physical infrastructure, world-class repair facilities, and highly-skilled local workforce.  Chinese strategists believe, perhaps rightly, that if the PLA could knock out Yokosuka, the U.S. fleet would need to fall back to Hawaii or even San Diego to meet its critical logistical needs.

A preemptive Chinese missile campaign, so goes this reasoning, could deliver a massive blow to the logistical foundations of U.S. power projection in Asia. By disrupting the supply system and degrading repair capabilities, Beijing may hope to choke off the American capacity to conduct combat operations at the outset.

Still, as events after Japan's bombardment of Pearl Harbor show, an operational triumph alone does not beget strategic success. Indeed, disaster awaited Imperial Japan. The Japanese diplomats accepting unconditional surrender onboard the battleship Missouri would surely have agreed.

It is unclear whether Beijing has thought through the likely strategic fallout following a missile blitzkrieg against U.S. forces on allied soil. But, the PLA's continuing missile buildup suggests that Chinese leaders might succumb to the false promise of a quick military fix that so beguiled Japanese strategists seven decades ago.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/07/u-s-bases-in-japan-sitting-ducks/?hpt=hp_c1

[Locutus]

That's a pretty interesting read right there. 

[Henry Hawk]

"We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve." 

-- Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Did you know that Yamanoto studied at Harvard?  and he was reluctant to enter into war with the United States...for obvious reasons.

[Locutus]

Did you know that Yamanoto studied at Harvard?  and he was reluctant to enter into war with the United States...for obvious reasons.

I did not know that bit of trivia.  Given what happened to them subsequently, I will say that Yamamoto made the understatement of the last century. 

[The Troll]

Did you know that Yamanoto studied at Harvard?  and he was reluctant to enter into war with the United States...for obvious reasons.

  Yep, he was afraid to wake up the sleeping giant.   He sure did. 

  Also we planned his death in a raid on his airplane with a group of P-38 Lockheed Lightnings.     Shooting him down over an island he was going to visit. 

  People should remember this thread and December 7th when they go out and buy a Jap car.