71yrs on..

On 15/10/1942 one of the many atrocities of the war occurred,

Lt. W.G.FARROW,
Sgt. H.A.SPATZ, Both in 40-2268 “BAT OUT OF HELL”

Lt. D.E.HALLMARK, in 40-2298 “THE GREEN HORNET”

of the Doolittle raiders, were executed by the Japanese.

Also to mention Lt. R.J.MEDER from 40-2298 died 1/12/43 from Malnutrition…also by the Japanese.

jack…

From Wiki:
” The Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle’s men.”
equivalent to the population of southampton (2011)

Jack…thanks for the post !

Jack:

Indeed a day to remember for sure..it changed the world so much. Even here in the US many youth have no or little idea of this date. My own father on that very nexy day enlisted in the US Marines and fought in several operations with the Fourth Marine Division. A brutal war no doubt..bloody and long. A salute and prayer for the good men & women of that generation who held strong in the face of a brutal enemy. Much thanks for your remembering !

Remember Pearl Harbor !

BlueNoser352

One also has to wonder what Hitler thought. He was doing well in Europe and could probably hold out againstt he UK almost indefinately in a stalemate…(rather like WWI…but instead of trenches, there was the English Channel) the UK on its own did not have the power to invade the Continent.
When America entered the war he must have known that that had changed…

We know exactly what Hitler thought. He declared war on USA couple of days after Dec 7th. He must have thought Japan would succeed in the Pacific. His declaration and not the other way round, USA declaring war on Germany, doesn’t seem to be well known for some reason.

the US in with us, and Russia invaded causing a 2 frount war for Germany.I honestly think thats why we are reading this in English and not German, God bless that generation,they were somethink else.

J.Boyle

Mmm! A bit of a sweeping statement. You are right Britain didn’t have the manpower and weaponry to undertake a solo invasion of the European continent at that time.

Who can say that we wouldn’t have the ‘nuts and bolt’s’ sometime in the future (The Audit of War – Corelli Barnett.) Solo? There wasn’t much that was solo about it. Manpower and munitions were supplied from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, India with contributions from another dozen or so countries.

All, at a time when Bomber Command was reducing Germany to a wasteland by sheer tonnage of bombs dropped.

The Japanese where hoping for a quick knock-out forcing the Americans to realise a Pacific war wasn’t in their best interest and could not be won without high cost and would therefore, not fight it.

How wrong they were.
But times change, people’s attitudes change…today, a similar assumption might be proved right.

One also has to wonder what Hitler thought. He was doing well in Europe and could probably hold out againstt he UK almost indefinately in a stalemate…(rather like WWI…but instead of trenches, there was the English Channel) the UK on its own did not have the power to invade the Continent.
When America entered the war he must have known that that had changed…

One of the saddest thing about this is that the US have been at war ever since…

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour America was only the 7th largest military power in the world. 12 months later and it was arguably the largest.

Biggest mistake the Japanese made at pearl was to miss the oil storage facility. Take that out and it would have severly hampered operations. The outcome was still a foregone conclusion however.

I think Pearl Harbor was doomed from the moment the Japanese realised the full implications of the documentation captured by the German Raider Atlantis from the British Merchantman Automedon.

I cannot imagine the horror experienced by the poor souls trapped in Battleship Row. I remember someone once telling me that the little bubbles of oil which still surface from the Arizona are called the Arizona’s tears. I can’t think of anything more poignant.

Whilst it is true that the Japanese caused immense damage and considerable loss of life at Pearl Harbor, the warnings that something was in the wind should have been heeded. Overconfidence? Complacency? Emphasis placed on the wrong areas of threat? Chance? Whatever, the element of surprise, surprisingly, remained in favour of the IJN and the rest, as they say, is history.

A lot of good men died that day and America was brought fully into the war. At the same time, in the Far East, the men of Britain, the Commonwealth and Dominions, were just beginning to find out that all the stereotypical images of the Japanese fighting soldier being unable to see well or to shoot straight were not worth the paper they had been printed on. Over the next three and a half years a good many of those men defending Singapore and Malaya would die at the hands of the Japanese.

For many reasons, December 7/8th is a time worth our remembrance.

Regards,

kev35