Day of Infamy

Sunday, December 7th, 1941: the day the Imperial Japanese navy attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor Hawaii.  The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The  photo above is of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on the USS West Virginia. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over the USS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard.

Seventy-three years later - today - we remember this event as the start of the US involvement in World War II, and rightly so.  Probably the most iconic image of that day is the sinking of the battleship USS Arizona, which lies on the Oahu lagoon's bottom, and is a both a monument and a memorial as the ship's crew are still entombed there.

Even though few WWII veterans are still alive today, we as a nation must never forget the attacks upon our sovereign soil. As with the infamous attack of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, those who attack us may, in the end, regret doing so.