Today we remember the lives lost on this day in 1941. Well, some of us do. I have yet to see a blurb on the news, Google did nothing with their cutesy banner like they do on world earth day. In that day the Japanese were locked in a struggle with China and as thier conquests and brutality grew the west slowly choked off the oil and mineral supplies it desprately needed to continue their war. In July of 1941 The west shut off the spigot and cut the Japanese from the raw matireials that it needed. This caused the Japanese to begin to look to the conquest of the East Indys and South East Aisia to gain the resources it needed. In November of 1941 peace negotiations were clearly approaching an end, U.S. officials fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. The prospect that Japan would attack east was unanticipated.
8AM on December 7, 1941 saw A Japanese task force attack the Island of Oahu and specificly Pearl Harbor. in the three hours that followed 2400 US servicemen and women were killed, 5 of 8 Battleships were sunk or sinking and the rest were damaged. Several othe ships were damaged and the bulk of the aircraft on the island were destroyed or damaged to the point where they could not fly.
The Japanese launched this attack to keep us out of the war. Ironically it was the deciding factor that galvanized us as a nation and gave us the backbone to keep fighting to the end. Even when the Japanese were defeated in the Coral Sea, the memory of this attack kept American spirit high and we pushed until we had erased the territorial gains they had made and forced them to surrender
Seems like everyone has forgotten this day. Like another day a little more recently in our history. but that is another post.
