Manning The Rails: Never Forget The December 7th Sneak Attack On Pearl Harbor

In November of 1970 I was one of many young sailors who “manned the rails” on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk as we passed the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. (See the above photo). 

We manned the rails in dress white uniforms on the edge of the ship as a salute to honor the sunken battleship USS Arizona and the sailors and Marines who died during the Imperial Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, “A date,” noted then-President Franklin Roosevelt, “which will live in infamy.” 

The Kitty Hawk made a port of call at Pearl Harbor just prior to our heading to Subic Bay in the Philippines and then onto “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam during the final years of the Vietnam War. 

Like many old surviving sailors today, I again salute the servicemen who died on December 7, 1941, and I’d like to remind younger readers to never forget the Pearl Harbor attack which drew America into World War II. 

On This Day In History The Imperial Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor

As History.com notes, on this day in 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pearl-harbor-bombed 

Below is a photo of my old ship, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, circa 1970, as she passes the USS Arizona  Memorial at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii:

Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole In FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor

Wes Vernon at the Washington Times offers a good review of John Koster's Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor.  

John Koster is not the first author to lay the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor largely at the feet of Soviet agents. He has, however, connected major pieces of that Soviet activity within the United States in significant detail.

Mr. Koster, a serious author of history and U.S. Army veteran, has written a volume shining new light on the Soviet plot — specifically as it involved Harry Dexter White.

In “Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR’s White House Triggered Pearl Harbor,” the author follows the twists and turns of White's perfidy as a top official in FDR's Treasury Department. Not the least of the New Dealers who relied heavily on White's judgment was his boss, Secretary Henry Morgenthau, as well as others in President Roosevelt's Cabinet.

Mr. Koster writes that White pulled off “one of the most devastating acts of treason in American history.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/12/book-review-operation-snow/?page=1