A date which will live in infamy:

https://www.pearlharborparade.org/home

Proud grandson of a WWII Bronze Star veteran!

Private First Class Linwood Huffstetler - Automatic Rifleman - K/399th IB - Century (100th) Division.

Sons of Bitche!

We sure as heck responded, didn't we? Japan picked a fight that they could not win.

But that was back in the days when we were capable of responding as a nation. I am not at all certain that this country could pull itself together to respond similarly today. And I am relatively certain that our woke military would have serious problems responding.

My father flew B-24s on the Ploiesti raids, which had the highest casualty rates of any WWII operation.
My godfather flew P-38s and later P-51s over the "hump" in the China-Burma-India theater.
A close friend of both was an infantry officer in Europe, injured and captured by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and sent to a POW camp in Poland. He and two other officers escaped, made their way across Poland and Ukraine to Odessa, and eventually got back to UK aboard a Royal Navy troop transport ship.

One grandfather fixed those planes, spending most of the war in Puerto Rico.
The other grandfather fed the soldiers, in North Africa, italy and the South of France.
Both were career military, in their 40s during the war.

One of my in-laws dads flew those planes and got shot down. He was part of one of the forced death marches late in the war as they moved POWs from prisons in the east. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki...rch_(1945)

(12-07-2021 01:58 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  My father flew B-24s on the Ploiesti raids, which had the highest casualty rates of any WWII operation.
My godfather flew P-38s and later P-51s over the "hump" in the China-Burma-India theater.
A close friend of both was an infantry officer in Europe, captured by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and sent to a POW camp in Poland. He and two other officers escaped, made their way across Poland and Ukraine, and eventually got back to UK aboard a Royal Navy troop transport ship.

The greatest generation.

(12-07-2021 01:58 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  My father flew B-24s on the Ploiesti raids, which had the highest casualty rates of any WWII operation.
My godfather flew P-38s and later P-51s over the "hump" in the China-Burma-India theater.
A close friend of both was an infantry officer in Europe, injured and captured by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and sent to a POW camp in Poland. He and two other officers escaped, made their way across Poland and Ukraine to Odessa, and eventually got back to UK aboard a Royal Navy troop transport ship.

My godfather was a gunner on B-17 in the 8th Air Force.

(12-07-2021 01:58 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  My father flew B-24s on the Ploiesti raids, which had the highest casualty rates of any WWII operation.
My godfather flew P-38s and later P-51s over the "hump" in the China-Burma-India theater.
A close friend of both was an infantry officer in Europe, injured and captured by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and sent to a POW camp in Poland. He and two other officers escaped, made their way across Poland and Ukraine to Odessa, and eventually got back to UK aboard a Royal Navy troop transport ship.

Your godfather might have known my grandpa.

My grandpa flew over the hump. P-51s and C-47s. He also flew in the Italian campaign.

Enlisted as a 16-year-old under a fake name. He aced all the tests, so at first they sent him to Alabama to be an instructor. He was bored out of his mind and goofed off and nearly killed himself in a crash, which got him "demoted" to overseas duty, which was exactly what he wanted all along.

He said that once he was flying over the jungle in Asia and found the most perfectly manicured golf course one could imagine. He landed on it and found the locals were keeping it maintained even though the European owners were off fighting in the war. Somehow he started playing during his downtime there. It started a love of golf that lasted his whole life.

He had plenty of other stories too. Died of cancer 30 years ago, but luckily he wrote them all down for us before he died.


My grandma was a WAC. My other grandpa was in the Merchant Marine. So 3 of my grandparents served in the war.

My dad served in the Merchant Marines and then enlisted as regular Army to go to Korea and VietNam. He served 25 years as an MP and in "military intelligence".

I guarandamntee you he and all the others listed here are rolling over in their graves.

A World War II Veteran Remembers December 7, 1941

Quote:Three weeks past my 15th birthday, I attended the New York Giants-Brooklyn Dodgers football game at the Polo Grounds with my friend Burt Boyar and 55,000 fans.

At half-time, the stadium announcer read a long list of names — high-ranking military officers. political leaders, and journalists — with instructions to “Call your office immediately!”

No reason given.

It was not until seconds after the last play that we were told that Pearl Harbor was being bombed by Japanese planes! Our country was at war!

The world we lived in had just disappeared.

Starting soon after the end of the first World War, Americans had become fiercely anti-war. They had drunk the propaganda Kool-Aid and merrily, innocently, marched into the horror of that conflict. When the appalling casualties came home — especially the victims of poison gas — there was a realization that the grandiose aims were a farce, and our people were enraged.

Anti-war propaganda was everywhere. Millions of copies of the devastating novel All Quiet On the Western Front were sold in a couple dozen languages. The American movie version was so powerful that it changed the life of its young star, Lew Ayers. He became a dedicated pacifist and almost lost his career as a result.

Heart-breaking songs like the highly successful Brother Can You Spare a Dime? blended down-and-out veterans and depression-era unemployed. Bing Crosby’s version brought tears.

One of the most powerful anti-war voices was the New York Daily News. With a huge circulation, it was almost rabid in its opposition to any American involvement in World War II.

The United States, with those attitudes, completely disappeared as the bombs exploded in Hawaii.

My reaction was immediate. Like millions of Americans, I wanted to fight for my country.

Before dawn the next morning, when I went to the Marine recruiting office in New York City’s lower Manhattan, there was already a two-block line waiting for it to open.

Things were so hectic that recruiting offices were closed down until the next day. The Marines announced that they would open at 7:30 instead of the normal 9 a.m.

(When I finally reached a tough-looking recruiting sergeant, he listened to me claim that I was old enough to enlist — then asked for a birth certificate to prove it. My Marine career ended. )

As news of the Japanese attack spread, the most vehement of the anti-war activists immediately lined up behind our country.

Montana Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, a fiery leader of the America First movement, summed up the thinking of most isolationists: “The only thing, now, is to do our best to kick the hell out of those Japs.”

Alongside an anti-war cartoon that it was too late to pull from the partly pre-printed edition being distributed after the attack, the New York Daily News editorial declared: “When you are attacked, there is nothing to do but fight. And when a nation gets into war, the way to fight it is to fight to the hilt, with the remorseless aim of winning the war.”

In the movie Tora, Tora, Tora, the Japanese admiral who commanded the bombing of Pearl Harbor lamented: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

The author will do a follow-up article on the United States at war. He watched the scene as few could. As one of the first USO entertainers, Charlie spent the first year of WWII playing at bases from coast-to-coast and border-to-boarder. He next lived in war-time New York City and Washington, D.C. before his naval service in the Pacific.

Charles Wiley is a 95-year-old World War II veteran with over 65 years experience as a military correspondent and lecturer.

My grandpa was a deep sea diver in the Navy, but he died when my dad was 8. Only have a few pics of him, and we share the same middle name. Recently, my dad gave me a set of my grandfather's dog tags, his Navy ID/ fingerprint, and a fixed blade knife that you can still read his name printed on sheath. Its some pretty neat things to get even though i never knew him.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the greatest generation.

(12-08-2021 08:28 AM)MemTigers1998 Wrote:  My grandpa was a deep sea diver in the Navy, but he died when my dad was 8. Only have a few pics of him, and we share the same middle name. Recently, my dad gave me a set of my grandfather's dog tags, his Navy ID/ fingerprint, and a fixed blade knife that you can still read his name printed on sheath. Its some pretty neat things to get even though i never knew him.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the greatest generation.

technologically speaking + those escaping oppression understood the full value of their tenure ... today's version barely remembers .... and a century hasn't passed ....

chew on that crap for a sec....it's beyond sad viewing in the 'rear view'....

It would not totally surprise me if our government allowed the Pearl Harbor attack on some level. They knew the voters were dead set against getting in another world war but the people were wrong and we had to do something. FDR knew we could not sit it out, no matter what the mood was in the country.

The debate ended that day and the whole nation was ready to take it to the nazi's and Japs.

I think its very possible but who knows.

One grandfather stayed stateside and was a ground school pilot educator, so he may have encountered some of your grandfathers if they were pilots. The other was stationed on a ship in the Pacific and contracted polio. It was never proven, but suspected that the ship was deliberately sabotaged.

There have been reports of memos being sent two days before the attack warning of a planned Japanese attack. Our Navy had seen the Japanese forces but thought they were heading to Thailand. The memos failed to be sent up the chain of command. That may be why many thought our government knew the Japanese were going to attack.

My Grandfather was with MacArthur in the Philippines. He wouldn’t talk much about the war. He would only say he was glad we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He believed the Japanese would have fought to the last man. He said they would never have surrendered.

My great uncle was in Germany. He said the Germans were gentlemen compared to the Japanese.

(12-08-2021 10:11 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  There have been reports of memos being sent two days before the attack warning of a planned Japanese attack. Our Navy had seen the Japanese forces but thought they were heading to Thailand. The memos failed to be sent up the chain of command. That may be why many thought our government knew the Japanese were going to attack.

My Grandfather was with MacArthur in the Philippines. He wouldn’t talk much about the war. He would only say he was glad we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He believed the Japanese would have fought to the last man. He said they would never have surrendered.

My great uncle was in Germany. He said the Germans were gentlemen compared to the Japanese.

The Japanese were fanatical and quite brutal as well. The crimes they committed against the Chinese as well as the horrific experiments they conducted on POWs is beyond belief, not that the Nazis were any better with their holocaust and evil execution methods.

As far as dropping the bombs, it was a tough proposition. Innocent civilians were killed and the effects of the radiation long-lasting, but something had to be done to break the will of the Japanese or they would never have given up.