Tora! Tora! Tora!

After seeing some of the programs on the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I have thought about my family and its history. My paternal grandfather, Joseph Tippen Parks was born in 1843 in Dundalk, Ireland. He came to this country in 1848 and some how grew to be 18 years old and joined the Union Army, 29th Ohio Volunteers and fought through the entire Civil War, including Gettysburg and 13 other battles. Chickamauga , Lookout Mountain and when on Sherman's March To The sea, New Hope Church, Ga. where he was shot in the chest, obviously surviving. My father was excused from WW1 because of family and age. My brother was a WW2 veteran, serving as a combat surgeon, I served in the states. Then, my oldest son served in Viet Nam in helicopters, my number two son served in Germany, my step son has served as a Marine, a sailor, and an Army captain with two tours in Iraq under his belt. His oldest son has served two tours in Afghanistan and now his youngest boy is scheduled to go to Afghanistan in January. My nephew served in Afghanistan as a tank commander and received some medals for his bravery. It has occurred to me that this family has made a significant commitment to this country over the years and continues to do so and I haven't mentioned the 5 in-laws that served. I also realized lately that I am the end of the original family string that my grandpa started in 1865.

 

That's a moving story of being American and serving our country. My thanks and respect to you, your forebearers and extended family.

 

That may seem strange to you to read these words from France, but either my generation had good teachers at school or I have a better than average memory, but I do remember it every year.
We were tought about the attack on Pearl Harbor at school as kids; not much about the pacific war itself, but Dec 7th, 1941 was a date we learned. What I know about the pacific war I learned myself later, outside of the school programs, but perhaps these were good enough to awake interest for self-research.

It is true that we, in the sixties and seventies, still learned a lot of dates at school, as milestones in history. Then these were not tought anymore, because someone decided learning dates was useless; kids do not learn dates today, I'm not sure this is a progress...

Rgds

 

Dates are not the only thing they are not learning. And it damn sure isn't progress. It is not just the schools that are to blame, the parents need to share in that as well.

 

You are right on. Young people have not learned penmanship, a basic requirement in everyday life. History is for old folks and who cares what happened way back. I off-handedly mentioned Dec.7th when dealing with younger clerks and they had no idea what significance that has. Many have have no idea when WW1 started and the Civil War happened around 1812, didn't it? The people in the U.K. and Canada know more American History than most Americans.

 

I was taught the same..at the same time I never heard of the niihau incident of the crashed Japanese fighter pilot and the ramifications until I was In Hawaii, it was swept under the carpet in school. ..I still remember when I was stationed in Japan, the stars and stripes would not mention anything on Dec 7th, until the next day!

 

It's somewhat important there, too... December 7th was the event that got the US into the war in Europe also. It prompted Hitler to declare war on the US: the US reciprocated.

 

And then Churchill convinced Roosevelt to prosecute the European theater hardest, with the Pacific theater being fought as more or less a second front with lower priority on assets.

 

I didn't realize that, Taz, thanks.


Fortunately, 6 months after Pearl, it was over for Japan. It became a losing defensive battle for them.

Battle of Midway put Japan on the ropes...

That didn't mean that a lot of people didn't die, though.

 

Didn't take much convincing as both recognized Germany as the bigger threat than Japan. IMO a real interesting historical "what if" is - what if Hitler hadn't declared war on the U.S. Would have put FDR in a bit of a political and diplomatic pickle.
T

 

I could call it a Pyrrhic victory for Japan.

However, if the US had been properly prepared for war, the entire Japanese fleet could have been destroyed that day.

 

Some trivia about the movie - the Stearman piloted by the flight instructor in the movie, was actually a Cessna. Which is now displayed in the Pacific Aviation Museum.

The P40 now displayed at Wheeler AAF, was a gift to the Army from the movie producers.

Haleiwa Field, where Taylor and Welch had their P40s parked, was later paved. Unfortunately, it's now largely abandoned, and has become a homeless encampment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_M._Taylor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Welch_(pilot)


An interesting side story to the attack that doesn't get a lot of press, was "The Battle of Niihau".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident

 

Well I know this very well...my family is from one of the three french "départements" that were claimed as being part of Germany by the Germans. And which were annexed to Germany (not occupied by, but annexed to) between 1871 and 1918, and then again between 1940 and november 1944.

My grandmother and my mother always told me when I was a kid in the sixties: you owe your freedom to the British for having held the line between june 1940 and june 1941. To the soviets (yes...) for having held against the Wehrmacht after June 1941. To the Americans for having crossed the Atlantic and liberated the country. By the way, as I have already written, those who liberated my village were mainly from Texas, and their interpretor was a lieutenant from Houston, Texas, who exchanged letters with the family for forty years; he even came over to visit again in 1956 (I still recall his adress by heart).

A quirk of fate was that, as these departements were annexed to Germany, and we were considered Germans, the men in age to be drafted were enlisted in the german army; so they were sent on the russian front. I had members of my family fighting in the german army on the russian front during the first world war, and during the second world war also.
By another quirk of fate, on may 9th, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war, I was in Stalingrad, of all places, meeting veterans of the soviet army...

There are many american cemeteries around my home village in the eastern part of France. When you see those rows of white stones, how can one not think about all those fine young men that crossed the ocean to give their life for us? The closest from my home town is only at a distance of fifteen miles: there are 10.489 graves here, the highest number of any american cemetery in Europe. How can one forget?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_American_Cemetery_and_Memorial

(an aside, for aviation buffs here: the great american ace George Preddy is buried in that cemetery)

So yes, indeed December 7th is an important date for us here also.

Rgds

 

I've read about Preddy...

Killed by 'friendly fire' (American AA gun) on Christmas morning, 1944.

V. sad.

 

Thank you.

 

You have given me a lesson in the history of France and Europe of which I had no knowledge. I'm very impressed and thank you. My best buddy in college was an infantryman in the 9th Division who walked the entire way while fighting from St. Lo to the Hurtgen Forest where he was terminally wounded. It never entered his conversation that he was fighting on someone else's soil against an enemy that was fighting someone other than his country. It was amazing to me that somewhere deep in his mind and that of millions of other soldiers that the cause was beyond them. His accounts of what he did were not "war stories" because they were clearly verified in his regimental history book that mentioned his name many times. His stories and those of my many friends who were in it keep me forever humbled.

 

" Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do or die."

 

Piece by excellent historian Ian W. Toll, author of Pacific Crucible and The Conquering Tide:

The paradox of Pearl Harbor - The Boston Globe

 

Well Bob, when You are born, like I was, in a part of land That has been often invaded, sometimes even burned to the ground (by the Swedes during the thirty years war on the seventeenth century) you learn That freedom does not come cheap, and You do your best to remember. Not far from home either is a place called Ban-Saint-Jean, where the Germans has a stalag for Ukrainian prisonners. That subject is still sensitive today with Russia. The remains of 2900 bodies have already been identified, but some think That perhaps as Much as 20.000 died There. So yes, we remain grateful to those That came to free us.
Rgds

 

One only needs to see the various graveyards across Europe containing the remains of the dead Allied soldiers from both World Wars to understand the Western Europeans have not forgotten, even in times of political disagreements. They are true monuments to those men. If I could post pictures I would but I always remember them when I have some negative outlook on one of those countries.
I remember a story of someone talking to the elderly French groundskeeper of one of them. A couple of people off in the distance were doing something that caught his attention in among the graves. He looked and said, "Oh, they're US Marines..it's OK".




Japan on the other hand is a very different situation. We had a couple of family friends that were POW's, one in the Bataan Death March. Don't get me started on that topic.

 

I read where Stalin had 20,000 Polish army officers killed while they were imprisoned. Do we have another little Stalin in place?

 

Those Polish officers were killed when Germany and Soviet russia shared Poland at the end of 1939.
As for the Russian prisoners made by the Germans later, after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the diplomatic position of Soviet Union was harsh, too: There were officially none, because, officially, Russians soldiers do not surrender. So these "do not exist". Those who were taken prisoners are "traitors".
Rgds

 

Lots of unusual things happened during WW-II with unlikely allies. Little known outside of Norway, but there were Norwegian volunteers fighting with the Germans against the Soviet Union in WW-II. Apparently, the communists were considered more of a threat than the Germans, even though Germany occupied Norway. Surprisingly large number of Germans moved back to Norway after WW-II and married Norwegian girls they had met during the war. Having lived in Oslo for 3 years and visited again in the late 80s, I can understand their attraction to Norwegian girls.

 

I live in the town George Preddy was from (there is a Pretty Blvd. here). I worked for several years with Georges nephew, this was during the last years of the Viet nam situation.