Today of course is the anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. I read this quote of Admiral Nimitz today with some thoughts a few days after the attack:

Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time.

In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, "Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by Admiral Chester Nimitz.

sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.


Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941.

There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.

On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every where you looked.

as the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?" Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice.

Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America . Which do you think it was?"

shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?" Nimitz explained:

Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning.

nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave.

If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.


mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired.



As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America . And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply.

That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make or God was taking care of America .

I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, Texas -- he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at it--Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism.

President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader that could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat.

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Nimitz is a true hero military leader of epic proportions.

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"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." Margaret Thatcher

Just wow!

It's sad to see the number of vets in attendance at these events shrinking so quickly now. Truly a generation like no other.

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Not surprising about the end of a generation, most of whom are in their eighties and nineties. It's still a moving sight to see the oil slick still seeping to the surface near the memorial, even after the bulk of the fuel was removed long ago.

I remember seeing something about the oil in the ship. The concern is that at some point the bulkheads or the hull structure will fail and the estimated 500,000 gallons of remaining bunker fuel oil will spill in to the harbor. I seem to recall saying that pumping it out was a option but they were concerned about replacing the oil with something so that the pressures remain the same and the ship integrity is not affected. Then there is the issue with it being a memorial and everything that is associated with that.

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- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

i was working in a vfw about 6 months ago and out of the blue hear the distinct "ting" of a clip popping out of an m-1 garand.if you know what i'm talking about you will never forget it.anyway i go in the back where the sound came from and the older guy in there was reloading clips for a funeral that afternoon.i got talking to him and he showed me the box of blanks and all the casings were dated 1942.he said they must have one helluva stockpile and that there is something on the order of close to 1000 vets dying everyday.i thought man that sounds hi.but then you think wwII.korea,vietnam it does seem possible