No more let sins and sorrows grow
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.
—Isaac Watts—
On the December 7, 2018 edition of BreakPoint, John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, declared, “Pearl Harbor was for the Greatest Generation what September 11 is for ours: a national memory.” Historian and author William Bennett writes, “An entire generation of Americans would remember where they were when they heard the shocking news of [the Japanese attack on] Pearl Harbor.”1
For a variety of reasons, ships in the American navy fleet stationed a Pearl Harbor were especially vulnerable that first Sunday morning in December, 1941.2
Historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen write,
Japan attacked methodically and with deadly efficiency. Bombers, torpedo planes, dive bombers—all covered by Mitsubishi Zero fighter planes—took out American air power, then hit the battleships on “battleship row,” sinking or severely damaging every one. The worst casualty, the USS Arizona, went down in ten minutes with a thousand sailors. Few ships of any sort escaped damage of some type.3
Eyewitness Testimony
Seaman First Class Jim Downing was stationed at Pearl Harbor and was serving as the USS West Virginia‘s chief mail clerk on that fateful day, but he was not aboard the ship when the attacks began. Newly married, he and his wife Morena had an apartment in Honolulu. Of course, immediately after hearing what had happened, Jim sprung into action.
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Copyright 2021 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
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