The Japanese offensive in the Pacific came to an abrupt end on Jnear the tiny island of Midway. Hitler’s action guaranteed that America would fight in Europe as well as the Pacific, and although the situation in early 1942 was grim for the Allies, time would bring the “inevitable victory” that President Roosevelt promised on December 8, 1941, before a joint session of Congress. The USS Shaw explodes during the surprise Japanese attack.Īdolf Hitler was impressed with the Pearl Harbor attack, so much so that Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, immediately dispatching submarines to attack ships along the U.S. By June 1942, Japan ruled much of the Asiatic-Pacific region and her naval and air forces lurked at the gates of Australia.
Day of infamy day of defeat free#
With American military power temporarily blunted, Japan was free to move military forces across Southeast Asia and the Pacific basin, quickly conquering Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, parts of New Guinea and a host of small islands. Japan’s sudden and brutal attack against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Sunday, Decemleft most of the Pacific fleet in ruins and 2,403 servicemen dead, including 1,103 entombed in the battleship Arizona. Roosevelt to Congress – DecemJapan Attacks in the Pacific We talk about it on today’s editorial page.“Yesterday, December 7,1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” President Franklin D. in to the second World War, is that we are slowly but surely losing those who survived that harrowing day.Īs we saw this week with the death of the 41st president of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, day by day we lost the remaining few of ‘The Greatest Generation.’īut we should never lose sight of what they did, the sacrifices they made, and the heroic actions they took to stem the tide of hate and defeat Adolf Hitler’s warped vision of the world. One of the things that we’ve noticed as we again mark the attack on Pearl Harbor that launched a reluctant U.S. Seventy-seven years later, we mark the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attack on the U.S. One glance at the calendar should tell you that.īut I wonder how many people today simply look at the calendar and see Dec. Now G2 and County Council are expected to set up a hearing to discuss the results of the risk analysis. Of course, supporters of Mariner East 2, including lots of folks in the energy field, are using it to trumpet what they’ve been saying all along, that there is little risk involved and that the pipeline is clearly the safest method to transport these materials. As you might expect, they concluded that an accident in a highly populated area such as Delaware County would be much more problematic – and deadly – than what would occur in a more rural neighborhood. That’s also something noted by the G2 risk analysis. Part of the argument in this extremely heated topic has to do with the notion of whether it’s a good idea to put this kind of pipeline, carrying these volatile liquid gases, through densely populated residential neighborhoods, including right next to schools and senior centers. That was part of the subhed that ran on Page One with the lead hed, ‘What’s the Risk?’ We were the first news outlet to report on the results of the risk analysis, and when we noted on the front page that, among other things G2 noted you’re more likely to be injured in a fall down the stairs, it was not especially well-received by opponents of the pipeline. So it’s not likely to happen, but if it does happen it would be very bad. The study concluded that in the event of a cataclysmic explosion, everyone in that blast zone could be killed. An explosion involving the pipeline would have a blast zone of 1.3 miles. So what’s the bad news? Well, in the event that there is a leak or other problem with the pipeline, a worse-case scenario, if you will, it would be devastating. The Good News (and this depends on what side of the issue you are on): G2 Integrated Solutions, the firm the county paid $115,000 to perform the study, concluded people are about as likely to be involved in a serious car crash or house fire as they are in some kind of incident involving the pipeline. I guess one way of looking at is that there is good news and bad news when it comes to that risk assessment study Delaware County Council had done on the controversial Mariner East 2 pipeline project.