MƒH Pearl Harbor ~ Eighty Years ~ December 7 1941
Moments from History
December 7, 1941
December 7, 2021
EIGHTY YEARS AGO, at 7.55 am on a pleasant Sunday morning in the Pacific - December 7, 1941 - the fault line of the Second World War slid once again, cataclysmic, setting the world war on course to become the most violent in history, that fault line not resettling until August 15, 1945.
The attack upon the Pacific Fleet lying at anchor at Pearl Harbor by an enemy that still played the diplomatic game in Washington D.C. all the time knowing what was about to be unleashed upon the Arsenal of Democracy led to President Roosevelt’s Address to Congress and to all the American People, the next day …
“YESTERDAY, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. ... I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. [i]”
"I write this Moment from History in recognition of my many American friends, and for one American family in particular, the family of Colonel Richard ‘Eager’ Ernest Evans USAF and Ms. JoAnn Nelson. The last 'greatest generation' representative of this family, JoAnn observes this Pearl Harbor anniversary from her home in Fort Worth, Texas, and continues to share stories of the war with her grateful children and grandchildren."
Richard’s story reflects that of millions of Americans who realised that the Second World War had started - again without warning - in Europe with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, followed by Britain’s declaration of war upon Nazi Germany on Sunday, September 3, 1939, and which, it is reported, Hitler was as one turned to stone, and his Reichsmarshal, Hermann Göring, was overheard in an aside … may God have mercy upon us if we lose this war … now engulfed them.
December 7, 1941, is a date seared into my memory, as is September 15, 1940, to the same degree as September 11, 2001. Excepting, of course, only, upon this last date I was alive.
But my parents had lived through the Second World War, and in 1966, Purnell Publishers commenced their eight-volume epic History of the Second World War. My parents enabled me to grasp that which, as an infant and throughout my primary years, approaching my 13th birthday in 1966, I would often eavesdrop on their chit-chat when they recalled “the war years” - mum standing at the sink “doing the dishes” and dad suitably armed with the drying cloth - and the loss of their brothers in the Royal Air Force. I was always amazed at what I could hear from another room. No wonder Dad called me ‘radar ears’.
So these weekly magazines became an integral part of my extra-curricular education over the next three years. And they stimulated discussion and very ‘alive’ debate when my parents would seem to know so much, to my developing brain, not only about the war at home, the bombings on Cheltenham, Coventry and Gloucester, the triangular points of our family, but also about Russia, or the Forgotten Army, or El Alamein, or the Battles of Berlin, the Ruhr and Hamburg, Midway - I can hear mum’s voice even now, in her 30s, “Midway was ferocious, Ken. Terrifying.”
The famous image at the top of this piece, I’ve selected, because I remember it froze me to the spot when I saw it for the very first time in newsreels, accompanied by dad’s commentary. It still does now. But speaking with my father about it at the time, Dad was also excitedly reliving the event on that actual date. Dad and Mum felt a huge relief as middle teenagers, that maybe, just maybe, Hitler and his gang might be defeated. And I see my uncle’s letters from Craig Field, Alabama USA, where he was undergoing pilot training, taking a more sombre tone.
He remarked how:
“over here it’s a bit like September 3rd again, Mum, when we declared war, and now America has declared war. There’s a sense of us all being in this now, not always evident before.”
Ken Webb snr was right on that point, for sure.
But it also underlines reality versus unreality in the form of splendid isolation, so fiercely advocated by people such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.
In the Autumn, reading “Richard Eager” A Pilot’s Story [ii] in 1941, Lieutenant Richard Evans had clearly foreseen sober reality, as, too, his three brothers, all of whom served in the United States Army Air Corps, three pilots and one navigator. I mention this, because it reflects this sober reality that was already present across the Pond and throughout the British Empire and its Commonwealth.
When men ride roughshod over freedom in the pursuit of an ideology that demands obedience, a day of reckoning will follow, as surely as day follows night.
We do not always like what our politicians do. At school, we can all remember how life became hell because of the unchecked playground bully. It would seem to be unending. We’d find every which way to avoid ‘playtime’. ‘Oh, I know, I’ll ask to become a school librarian’. To the question ‘why don’t you do changing room duty in the gym, Ken? Silence. The gym was a natural bullying point, and not just from the kids.
And then we remember the day when, in our schools, someone, stood up to the bully and either beat the proverbial out of him - I say ‘him’ but the girls could be bullies, too. And peace was restored. We could go out in the fresh air again. Funny thing is, a couple of bullies in my own life actually became very close friends.
So, on this Eightieth Remembrance of that terrible Sunday in 1941 ~ when I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant [iii] let us stand firm. The language of diplomacy is eloquent or thuggish. A statement as to why it is necessary for the United States to send no officials or diplomats to the forthcoming Olympics is eloquence at its best. The bully’s diplomatic reply was, well, as I recall the playground bullies … unyielding, intransigent, arrogant.
To all Americans, being the leader of the free world is one hell of a role. But step up to the plate, all. Do not be kowtowed by the bullies and idiotic religions of the Middle East.
[i] President F D Roosevelt’s Address to Congress ~ December 8, 1941
[ii] “Richard Eager” A Pilot’s Story by Col R E Evans and Barbara Evans Kinnear (2021)
[iii] reputed to have been uttered by Admiral Yamamoto in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor … there is a fierce argument on this subject. I do, though, remember my father using that phrase that, to my young mind, greatly appealed.
December 7, 2021
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023
In light of the War in Ukraine, it is sensible to repeat this quotation as we move swiftly to the second year of the War in Ukraine.
“When men ride roughshod over freedom in the pursuit of an ideology that demands obedience, a day of reckoning will follow, as surely as day follows night.”
Out of respect for the American People, I have, throughout this reflection remained true to the American date layout. KTW
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
