As a sailor, I know what Sundays in port are like. It is the one day you can actually be laid back and lazy. At 7am on a sunny day, you might be out on deck, or on the mess decks, or dealing with some of those personal chores that you rarely have time for any other day of the week. Or you might be on cold iron watch ... taking a few readings and watching the clock. You might be nursing a hangover from Saturday liberty. Maybe you are getting ready to attend a church service, or going on the beach for a lazy day.
But, on this particular Sunday things are different. Aircraft with strange markings are flying low over your base, gun fire, explosions, darkness below decks, mayhem. 2000 people just like you die that Sunday, 1200 on one battleship. Many are trapped, many are wounded. Fires burn, ships struggle to get underway, smoke fills the air. Sirens and ship's whistles blare. The port comes alive. A lazy Sunday morning turns into a struggle for survival. That Sunday changed the lives of millions and will be forever etched in the collective mind of the American sailor.
On that Sunday, the sleeping giant awoke filled with dreadful resolve. That resolve led American sailors to another day on another ship in another port on another Sunday... September 2, 1945.
To all the mates who suffered through that day, to all those who perished on that day, and to all those who suffered through that war. I remember you on this day... Ne Obliviscaris .
Very well said, Chief.
That war shaped my early life and installed some of the core values that are stamped deep within me, things that are no longer politically correct..
I look at the world today and think of all the great advances we have made since then, like the mars ship undergoing tests, and wonder if our leaders are going to throw them all away by getting involved with petty wars between people in uncivilised countries and I also wonder if we should take a step back from these squabbles and spend our money on improving our own situations..
Our fathers and grandfathers paid a great price in the belief that they were fighting so that such a thing would never happen again..My wife's father (a British colonel) firmly believed that the third world war would start in the middle east..and it is beginning to look as if he may have been right.
Pearl woke a sleeping tiger..and the price was far too high for the whole world..
John.
Some pics of that fateful day......Pray God we never forget....
https://www.facebook.com/marines/photos/pcb.10152378004605194/10152378004155194/?type=1
Fighting and winning that war was no easy task. But neither was the "rebuilding" of those war torn countries. We have to give a lot of credit to the people who took former enemies and turned them into friends. Things could have turned out much differently.
So true.