Recalling the Infamy of Sunday, December 7, 1941
Submitted by Nick Kelly on December 7, 2008 - 8:42pm.
National Security
In memory of all who fought and died....
Keith Holcomb could clearly see the gunner in the back of a Japanese fighter plane look right at him before the man turned the machine guns on him. “I tried to get to a complex of brick buildings, where I thought I would be safe,” Holcomb said.
Holcomb, 88, was a 21-year-old Army Air Corps mechanic stationed at Hickam Field next to Pearl Harbor 67 years ago when a surprise attack by Japan crippled the U.S. Navy’s forces in the Pacific Ocean and ushered the United States into World War II.
That plane swooped so close to him, Holcomb recalled, that he could see the gunner’s face. He hit the ground when the gunner began firing.
“He missed me, and he was close … I feel very fortunate to be here,” Holcomb said.
Seconds later, the plane burst into flames and crashed, he said.
Holcomb, a 50-year Fort Collins resident, was the sole witness to the Pearl Harbor attacks attending a short ceremony at the Associated Veterans of Loveland hall Sunday marking the anniversary of the bombing.
His wife, Erma Holcomb, said her husband rarely talks about what he saw at Pearl Harbor. Among the 2,345 military personnel killed were some of Keith Holcomb’s friends, she said....
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Now, 67 years after the Pearl Harbor bombing, Keith Holcomb said people shouldn’t let the event slide into a distant memory.“Don’t take anything for granted, we need to remember that day,” he said.
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20081207/NEWS01/81207012/1002
For pictures and links go to the Navy site.
The April 1942 air attack on Japan, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet and led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, was the most daring operation yet undertaken by the United States in the young Pacific War. Though conceived as a diversion that would also boost American and allied morale, the raid generated strategic benefits that far outweighed its limited goals.
The raid had its roots in a chance observation that it was possible to launch Army twin-engined bombers from an aircraft carrier, making feasible an early air attack on Japan. Appraised of the idea in January 1942, U.S. Fleet commander Admiral Ernest J. King and Air Forces leader General Henry H. Arnold greeted it with enthusiasm. Arnold assigned the technically-astute Doolittle to organize and lead a suitable air group. The modern, but relatively well-tested B-25B "Mitchell" medium bomber was selected as the delivery vehicle and tests showed that it could fly off a carrier with a useful bomb load and enough fuel to hit Japan and continue on to airfields in China.
Gathering volunteer air crews for an unspecified, but admittedly dangerous mission, Doolittle embarked on a vigourous program of special training for his men and modifications to their planes. The new carrier Hornet was sent to the Pacific to undertake the Navy's part of the mission. So secret was the operation that her Commanding Officer, Captain Marc A. Mitscher, had no idea of his ship's upcoming employment until shortly before sixteen B-25s were loaded on her flight deck. On 2 April 1942 Hornet put to sea and headed west across the vast Pacific.
Joined in mid-ocean on 13 April by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey's flagship Enterprise, which would provide air cover during the approach, Hornet steamed toward a planned 18 April afternoon launching point some 400 miles from Japan. However, before dawn on 18 April, enemy picket boats were encountered much further east than expected. These were evaded or sunk, but got off radio warnings, forcing the planes to take off around 8 AM, while still more than 600 miles out.
Most of the sixteen B-25s, each with a five-man crew, attacked the Tokyo area, with a few hitting Nagoya. Damage to the intended military targets was modest, and none of the planes reached the Chinese airfields (though all but a few of their crewmen survived). However, the Japanese high command was deeply embarrassed. Three of the eight American airmen they had captured were executed. Spurred by Combined Fleet commander Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, they also resolved to eliminate the risk of any more such raids by the early destruction of America's aircraft carriers, a decision that led them to disaster at the Battle of Midway a month and a half later.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell
See this sentence in the article:
Spurred by Combined Fleet commander Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, they also resolved to eliminate the risk of any more such raids by the early destruction of America's aircraft carriers, a decision that led them to disaster at the Battle of Midway a month and a half later.
What does "them" refer to? If I didn't know the history, I would have thought that "the decision led the American carriers to disaster" instead of "the Japanese high command." In fact, the disaster at the Battle of Midway happened to the Japanese carriers, not the American ships.
It's very easy to create sentences with pronouns such as it, he, she, and they (and their objective or possessive cousins) with ambiguous antecedents (the nouns to which the pronouns refer). The mind wants to link the pronoun to the last noun that makes sense. In this case, "American carriers" occurs after long after the "they" that refers to "the Japanese high commend" two sentences earlier.
Watch for things like this in your own writing to increase clarity and reduce ambiguity.
The Grammar Snob
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
George Orwell
From today's Columbus Dispatch...
"To put it simply, presidents are public servants - they shouldn't be in government to serve themselves or narrow special interests." ~Wes Clark, 1-04