221207 Pearl Harbor Day

Wednesday December 7, 2022

81 years ago today the Japanese attacked the navy and army air corps on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Thus began the official U.S. involvement in WW-2. Our navy had been escorting convoys in the Atlantic for a year before, helping protect the supply ships to Britain, during which German submarines attacked U.S. ships and heavily damaged one U.S escort ship. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were 2403 U.S. navy, army, marine corps and civilians killed. Half of that number were sailors aboard the U.S.S. Arizona. War was declared on Japan the next day. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941. 16 ships were damaged, 3 were destroyed, along with 169 aircraft on Oahu. On that fatal day the Japanese awakened a sleeping giant. They mistakenly thought the people of the U.S. were weak and had no stomach for war. They were wrong. Hundreds of thousands enlisted in our armed forces. Civilian manufacturers switched from making cars and boats into making ships, planes, tanks and ammunition in a few weeks time. War production started around the clock, seven days a week, cranking out more war materials than Japan, Germany and Italy could ever imagine. U.S. civilians manned those factories, they conducted scrap drives, saved cooking grease (used in making ammunition) and created victory gardens. Every citizen did their part in conducting the war. As the war progressed, more and more gold stars began showing up on windows in every neighborhood, indicating the family had lost a service member in the war effort. Many homes had more than one star on their windows. One family had five stars on their window. The five Sullivan brothers were all killed when their ship the USS Juneau was sunk in action during the battle of GuadalCanal.