Remembering ...

Pearl Harbor, looking towards the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri
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Eighty three years ago, elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked elements of the United States Seventh Fleet at Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu. The attack was devastating and it shocked the entire nation. However, the attack was indecisive at best.

Why do I say that?

The oil storage tanks weren't hit.

There were no aircraft carriers in Pearl at the time. While most naval officers still considered the battleship to be the most prestigious (and militarily useful) ship, those ships were nearly obsolete in naval terms. The aircraft carrier would quickly supersede the battleship in importance.

So the Japanese sank or damaged eight battleships:

• USS West Virginia
• USS Pennsylvania
• USS California
• USS Tennessee
• USS Maryland
• USS Nevada
• USS Oklahoma
• USS Arizona

Of those warships only USS Oklahoma and USS Arizona never fought again. USS Arizona being completely destroyed on the morning of the 7th of December and USS Oklahoma being eventually written off as too far gone to repair.

So in reality, they only destroyed two battleships. Two, out of eight.

The attack aroused and united the American people as nothing else probably could. (After all, the Germans had torpedoed the USS Reuben James in October of 1941. Where was the outcry over that? As the USS Reuben James was actively engaged in attacking a German U-Boat at the time, when we weren't at war with Germany, no doubt the gubmint didn't want to make a fuss about that.)

Less than four years later, Hiroshima and Nagasaki paid the price for the attack on Pearl Harbor. You might say that the Japanese Empire had "f**ked around and found out."

A comment on one of my older Pearl Harbor posts sparked today's post. Cap'n HMS Defiant mentioned the memorial to the submarine crews still on eternal patrol in the Pacific as a result of World War II. So I went in search of that memorial.

And got sidetracked.

Pearl Harbor in 2024
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While using Google Streetview in the vicinity of the Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum, I turned the point of view towards Ford Island at the spot marked by the yellow circle above, which is reproduced in the opening photo. The overhead view above was reoriented to try and match the aerial photo of Pearl Harbor in the next photo.

The red circle approximates the view point of the yellow circle in the "today" version of the photo.

Pearl Harbor in October 1941
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You might ask, "Well Sarge, so what?"

While preparing to do my annual Pearl Harbor post I reread my older posts. One thing struck me, in all of the pictures I've seen, from ground level, the action seems close in and very focused. Whereas the view I captured in the first photo presents a more open, spread out viewpoint.

Very early in the attack, a Japanese aircrewman took this photo -

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That's when it struck me, the smoke. In nearly all of the photos I've seen from that day, there is a lot of smoke, from burning ships, burning buildings, and burning aircraft. I think that's what gave those photos a feeling of nearness to the event. The smoke framed the scene in such a way as to make you focus on what you saw to your front.

In the photo above, there is very little smoke (note that the red circle marks the approximate area of the viewpoint for the opening photo) and only a couple of Japanese aircraft are readily visible. Now we know that 183 aircraft were involved in the first wave of the attack, but not all of them had the battleships as their target. So not all of them would be in your field of view at the same time.

While the action for those on the ground was focused and very intimate indeed, the bigger picture was more open and spread out. That's what struck me about that opening photo, it gave me a different perspective on the attack. It made me think.

It struck me, after all that musing and thinking, that the attack on Pearl Harbor is slowly receding into the national memory. It is no longer an intimate gut-punch for those who weren't even born until many years later. It's still like that for me because my grandparents and parents lived through that time period.

So many Americans won't even think of those who lost their lives on the anniversary of that day in 1941, nor will they remember to pause and remember the attack itself.

I'm not one of those people.

Remember Pearl Harbor. As we've seen, it could happen again. Not the same of course, but not all that different. After all, 9/11 happened, didn't it?

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Remember ...

History rhymes.