Pearl Harbor Day

[Chum]

Our National Museum of the Pacific War is hosting an ex-president tomorrow along with an air-reinactment of the raid out at the airfield. It's always a sight to have Mitzubishi Zero's and Corsiar fighters buzzing the skies around the county, the Confederate Air Force puts on one remarkable show for this event, but you still need plenty of imagination. There are Japanese Infantry troops shopping at my grocery store, flamethrower demonstrations (not displayed together at the same time) and lot's of foreign troops (training at nearby Fort Sam) buying-up tourist goodies today. One hell of a show for just the sadly few remaining living vets of that historically infamous day.

Ironic too, as we're most valued friends now even though a few of the vets of Bataan and Corregidor refuse to meet with or honor the Japanese representatives, understandably.

 

[Crazy_Jimmy]

My grandpa is still going at 82,i know he was in the navy and I think he was at pearl harbor when it all went down.i dont think he realy likes to talk about that stuff to much.I may ask im kinda curious.He prefers to talk about country music and song writing.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

My Dad was in a supply ship in the western Pacific when the bombs were dropped. He told me that they felt the air concussion or heard the explosions.

I wish that I knew exactly where he was when that happened.

 

[Chum]

Day After - the air show was canned due to low ceiling on the weather but my son and I spent some time on the tarmack wandering around the old restored birds - Bush number 1's Falcon jet was waiting and running (N number traces ownership to ExxonMobile, no suprise) and entourage of suits who accompany him everywhere were unaware of our snooping-on-foot-from-the-backside position, again no suprise. Advatages of home turf, eh?

Some new revelations presented by researchers on the attack were suprizing...there was a breach in harbor security and a fifth minisub actually made it in and torpedoed the Oklahoma with a 800-pounder during the air raid - causing the battleship to roll over. The fourth minisub is in our museum's possession, preserved intact and it's pilot (the first Japanese POW of WW2) was here again. This information has been kept secret for over 60 years - for security reasons, but we know how well that goes. It is said the crewmen aboard this fifth sub made it to a safe house in Pearl City, HA and sat out the war in luxury after scuttling the craft in a shallow reed bay, recently "re-discovered".

We still managed to get some treework done - just had some interesting sidelines to the otherwise normal day.

Tom, there are sea charts that position 7th Fleet ships on that fateful day, out several hundred nautical miles from Pearl - know that name of his ship from his old letters or records...if you have them? We can pinpoint his location that day, might be an interesting document to have!