At this time 80 years ago, the attack hadn’t come yet. I’m writing this at 11:14 a.m. our time, but it’s still 0614 at Pearl Harbor. If I remember correctly without looking it up, the Japanese planes arrived at 0755.
At least some of them came in over the Waianae mountains. When my wife and I visited the museum in 2015, I pointed toward the range and told her that’s where they came from. I had seen those ridges often enough from our backyard when I was in high school.
Burl cut in to provide perspective. He said yes, they came from there, but they didn’t skim low over them the way you may picture it. They were up high — when they bombed the harbor they were that high, he said, pointing to models that were little larger than flies glued to the ceiling of the museum entrance, about 10 or 12 feet above us. I had had no idea. Of course, the torpedo planes had to get low, but the bombers did not. At any rate, the way those battleships were lined up next to Ford Island, if you missed one from that height, you hit another.
There are other details I’ve known at one time or another, but I’m not going to look them up to check.
Today is about memory rather than precision. But there is one memory I’d like to check out, to make sure I have it just right: As I recall from being told, that afternoon my Dad helped another kid deliver papers with news of the attack. It was an extra, if it was the Post. Probably also an extra if it was the Star.
It was my Dad’s 13th birthday, and that’s how he celebrated it.
I’d like to hear him tell the story again, so I have the details fresh in my mind.
Did he use this bike to deliver those papers? I don’t know…
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What a photo Brad. He had the wisdom of a career Naval Officer at a young age; CLEARLY sir.
Happy birthday Admiral. Say hey to another hero, Senator Bob Dole (but prolly no posthumous promotion to President for the Senator).
I was with my Dad his last night in this existence 24 years ago. He had just turned 67; I just turned 68.
Of course, stories: “I’d like to hear him tell the story again, so I have the details fresh in my mind.”
Write the stories; it will be hard. We really can’t/couldn’t write ours. Correct Sir?
Now we lose a Monkee; RIP Michael.
I was with my Dad his last night in this existence 24 years ago. He had just turned 67; I just turned 68.
Of course, stories: “I’d like to hear him tell the story again, so I have the details fresh in my mind.”
Write the stories; it will be hard. We really can’t/couldn’t write ours. Correct Sir?
Now we lose a Monkee; RIP Michael.