A DAY OF INFAMY!

"How could this happen?",  "Where is Pearl Harbor?".  "How could Japan do that to us?"
Americans watched closely the war in Europe and the "Battle of Britain".  They were interested in what Hitler was doing and some even watched with a quiet admiration at the man's ability to take so much territory so easily.  But enter the war?  NO!  The "America First" movement, the WWI Vets, the German American Bund (Brown Shirts) all were declaring "Sit this one out"!
But reality has a way of sneaking up on us and "sneak" it did on December 7, 1941 when Japanese planes came with bombs and torpedoes and blazing guns.  America was caught flatfooted!
Washington knew that Japan was on rampage in Asia and British and Dutch holdings in the Western Pacific.  They were concerned about our bases in the Philippine Islands.  We even beefed up our base on Wake Island, just in case???  But Pearl Harbor?
When the Japanese cruised all that way, undetected, in the northern Pacific and launched there bombers and fighters and torpedo planes they could not believe their good fortune.  They came in from the north over Hickam and Wheeler Air Fields, shooting up the planes on the ground on their way to Pearl where our Battleships, the pride of the Navy, lay at anchor.  No Torpedo nets had been put in place because the harbor was only 45 feet deep and it was thought that air dropped torpedoes would just dive into the mud on the bottom.  The Japs had already thought of that and solved that problem.
What happened there will always be remembered and the 2,474 Soldiers and Sailors who died there honored.  The USS Arizona remains under the Flag and a Memorial to that "Day of Infamy"!........Medicineman!