As soon as I reached the first platform, I saw Second Lieutenant Simonsen lying on his back with blood on his shirt front.
I bent over him and, taking him by the shoulders, asked if there was anything I could do. He was dead, or so nearly that speech was impossible. Seeing there was nothing I could do for the lieutenant, I continued to my battle station. There was a lot of talking going on and I shouted for silence, which came immediately. I had only been there a short time when a terrible explosion caused the ship to shake violently. I looked at the boat deck and everything seemed aflame forward of the mainmast.
I reported to the major that the ship was aflame, which was rather needless, and after looking about, the major ordered us to leave. I was the last man to leave secondary aft because I looked around and there was no one left.
I followed the major down the port side of the tripod mast. The railings, as we ascended, were very hot, and as we reached the boat deck I noted that it was torn up and burned.
The bodies of the dead were thick, and badly burned men were heading for the quarterdeck, only to fall apparently dead or badly wounded.
The major and I went between No 3 and No 4 turret to the starboard side and found Lieutenant Commander Fuqua ordering the men over the side and assisting the wounded.
He seemed calm and the major stopped and they talked for a moment. Charred bodies were everywhere. The second world war now encompasses the globe. This has come about in a way that stamps an indelible impress on history. It lengthens the vista and deepens the gravity of the struggle. In the first phase it confronts the empire and the US with a crisis of existence such as they had never known and scarcely conceived. Sombrely in one sense, happily in another, sudden and startling warnings have forced their instant awakening.
The trumpets of the apocalypse have been sounded in their ears so that no soul remains asleep. Let us come at once to the chiaroscuro of this vision of universal war for the mastery of the oceans, the continents, and the air. What of the light and the shade? Bad news? Yes; and it is not our way here to blink one jot of it. But what of the good news? It is not only there with a breadth of light rifting the storm clouds.
For the long-term factors of universal war, the magnitude of the good news far transcends the bad. Roused from ocean to ocean as never before both by the virulent perfidy and the devastating technique of the Japanese attack on their vitals, the American people are in the war. But there Samuel Fuqua Missouri-born Samuel Fuqua had a front row seat to the devastation at Pearl Harbor from aboard USS Arizona, a battleship that was heavily bombed during the first wave of the attack. Paul Kennedy was expecting to sleep in on the morning of December 7, He had been on deck duty on board the U.
Sacramento at Pearl Harbor until 4 a. So, when alarms sounded at around 8 a. The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.
Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf On the infamous morning of December 7, , Japanese fighter pilots made final arrangements for their deaths.
The aviators penned farewell letters and slipped them into envelopes along with locks of hair and clipped fingernails that their loved ones could use for their funerals. On the morning of December 7, , Japan launched a sneak attack on the U. The story goes that when he unfolded and read the note in the spring of , Harry Dexter White tried not to look surprised and controlled his breathing.
Treasury official Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Japan and the Path to War. Recommended for you. Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor Attack. Why a Top U. See More. Here in , with U. Service personnel deployed around the world to protect these same values, we should remember the courage of the sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines who saw the United States through such turmoil in the days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the against-all-odds victories in Tokyo, at the Battle of Midway, and ultimately in World War II itself.
His ship was later sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The note is a prayer from his bride, Evelyn Howell, always sure to remember the service members who "lost their tomorrows. Many of our country's servicemen lost their tomorrows for our sakes. May we, with your help, make our todays count.
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