Contributed by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Pearl Harbor
7 December 1941
I remember where I was and what I was doing shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon on December 7, 1941. My dad called me in to where he and a couple of his friends were sitting by the huge Stromberg Carlson 350R console radio, its front doors swung open. They were leaning forward, hanging onto every word coming out of the polished walnut cabinet. The breathless announcer was talking so fast he sometimes stumbled over his words. The usual calm and soothing baritone of a professional radio news reporter was replaced by an almost panicked staccato, an octave higher than his voice would have sounded normally. One phrase has stayed stuck in my mind’s ear all these years, “They stabbed our boys in the back!”
At first I thought they were talking about Japanese soldiers bayoneting our soldiers and sailors in the back, as I had seen them do in the newsreels of the massacre of Nanking. Even as a kid, I knew war was on the horizon. Six weeks earlier, a Nazi U-boat had sunk the destroyer USS Reuben James as it escorted a convoy of cargo ships carrying food and supplies to England.
Everyone thought that when war did come, it would come from Europe. No one but a few farsighted tacticians like General Billy Mitchell were looking west, and even predicting that an attack would come by air. Mitchell was Court Martialed for his outspoken military and political heresy. When Americans were killed in what was to be the first military engagement of WW-2 with the sinking of the Reuben James, President Roosevelt held back committing troops and sailors to combat despite the provocation. Hitler was counting on that kind of restraint, or he would not have been so bold as to sink an American warship. He knew the US was not prepared to fight a war, since American troop levels had been drawn down to very low numbers, and much of the equipment was either obsolete or obsolescent. The country was recovering from the Great Depression, and needed time to re-arm.
Admiral Yamamoto took Roosevelt’s options away from him that Sunday morning. Hitler was said to be furious with his Japanese allies.
Which brings us to the story my cousin Jimmy.
Jimmy Gates was from Cleveland, Mississippi. He grew up hunting squirrels and other game to help put food on the family table during the Depression. He was a crack shot. After he got out of high school, the economy was still reeling from the Great Depression, and opportunities were few in the Mississippi delta cotton fields. Seeing the peacetime military as a way to escape the hot farm fields, He joined the Army Air Corps as a Private. He liked airplanes, and figured it would be a lot better branch of the service for him than being an infantryman. For Jimmy, flying beat walking any day. The Air Corps liked Jimmy too. He was a superb marksman, and had unusually good eyesight, traits which seem to run in our family (when I was his age, my eyesight was 20/13). They made Jimmy a bombardier and nose gunner in a B-17 bomber. It was a good choice, because his ability to put bombs on target was uncanny, at a time when the average bomb fell a quarter mile off the intended target.
Hickam Field
7 December 1941
Jimmy was playing pool in the Day Room that Sunday morning. He heard airplanes flying at combat power settings and bullets hitting things outside. He ran to the window and saw planes with the “red meatball” markings wheeling overhead and diving on Hickham Field. He dove out the open window, because he knew buildings would be a target. After all, he was trained as a bombardier, and knew exactly what bomb aimers would be targeting. He tumbled out the window into the flower bed and took off running. He had only gotten a few steps when a bomb came through the roof , exploding in the room he had just vacated. The blast knocked him down, but he wanted to get as far from the buildings and flight line as he could. Those would be the targets, and he was in no mood to be a target that day. He was a 24 year old Sergeant at the time, and wanted to have a 25th birthday. He knew his next birthday might be his last, if he did manage to live that long.
He got a chance to fight back soon enough. As the runways and ruined hangars were repaired, new B-17 bombers were arriving from the mainland US. After a few more weeks of training, Jimmy Gates went to war. He had lost good friends that December morning. It was payback time.
When his eye was not glued to the eyepiece of his top-secret Norden bombsight, he was handling the machine guns in the nose, looking for enemy aircraft.
He sank several Japanese warships, one of them by putting a bomb down the smokestack. Apparently one of his crew-mates had bet him he couldn’t do it. It was most unusual for a bombardier shoot down a fighter plane. I know he was given full credit for shooting down at least one Zero fighter. He told of one mission where the crew voted on whether to bail out or stay with the crippled plane. He elected to stay. When he jumped down from the plane, shredded ribbons of his parachute started falling out a hole in the chute pack. There was a piece of antiaircraft shell the size of his hand in the middle of what was left of his parachute.
The August 7, 1942 New York Times reported that Air Corps Sergeant James F. Gates of Cleveland, Mississippi was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in the Solomon Islands area. It would not be his last medal, or his last Silver Star. Jimmy wore very little flash on his uniform. He was as different from soldiers like General David Petraeus as night is to day. After it was created in 1958, he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal.
Jimmy survived WW-2, but stayed in the Air Force. Because of his outstanding skill, bravery and intelligence, he was sent to officers candidate school, and was now an officer. When B-29s arrived on the scene in the Pacific, he was assigned to a B-29 squadron. He flew right up until the end of the war, including some of the last raids on Japan. In the early 1950s he came to visit at our house. I had about a million questions, but some he would not, or could not, answer. I asked him if he had been one of the crews selected to train for the atomic bomb. He changed the subject. I remember him suddenly wanting to talk about the outstanding performance of the P-38 in dives and climbs, compared to the Zero. I found out later he had been assigned to the 509th Composite Group, and my suspicions had been true.
Jimmy went on to fly during the Korean war. He was one of those aviators for whom flying was a way of life, so he stayed in the service. At various times he was assigned to B-47 and then B-52 bombers when his squadron got them. He was a three war veteran, staying on through the Vietnam war.
Find A Grave contributor
Jimmy retired from the Air Force with the rank of Major. He eventually became the victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, living his last years in a nursing facility in Springfield, MO. He is buried in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Springfield.
I prefer to remember the young man who took his brother Billy and me to the Saturday afternoon matinee, and who loved to go squirrel hunting. He made a joke of diving out that open window into the flower bed that sunny Sunday morning, but I know now something I didn’t realize then. There was a hell of a lot of pain in those memories. Seventy-two years ago this morning.
I’m sure many of you have noticed all the Nazis in the USA that have recently uncloaked themselves to all of us.
Well as you can see with your own eyes Thomas Jefferson is advising everyone to send them packing or straight to hell.
Violence is absolutely not needed at this moment when this current violent revolt against us & our USA by those Nazi bankers, all that’s called for at this moment is your strong resistance to it & the force of your daily commerce/financial commitments towards your families & the nation.
**”No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government” — Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 **
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/strongest-reason-people-to-retain-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms-quotation
Randyjet,
No disrespect meant, but if you wish to teach military history please by all means tell us the names & history of the Banking.Insurance Scum & other War profiteers & their actions in financing all these wars the past 3-400 years.
If you perjured yourself in public ever you’d have almost no creditability in court, yet many in govt have done so on a consistent basis over just the last 200 years.
I do not believe most any govt official story or the Dec 7 story without more proof.
I can still honor vets yet still ask the questions that need asked.
I think thats enough from me now unless any questions.
Another American hating piece of Trash Nazis?
I haven’t study him much yet I’d like to know.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/colonel-who-vowed-to-disarm-americans-works-with-homeland-security.html
American Hating Nazis for sure!
http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/06/new-york-city-confiscating-rifles-and-shotguns/
**Otteray Scribe 1, December 7, 2013 at 8:45 pm **
OS,
I always wish to treat delicate subjects with respect. I knew I should attempt to show a special respect today. I believe did on;
**Oky1 1, December 7, 2013 at 3:58 am **
I’m only what I am & often have to reach to be better then I have available.
As I’ve mentioned before my family has many vets that served & received honorable discharges.
Why back, ie: Virginia Continental Line.
Heroic actions or just following orders they did what their commanders & our govt ask them to do.
One of my Great Grand Dads rode with William Tecumseh Sherman & his march though the South. Yes, he was Honorable Discharged.
I mostly understand what that outfit did & just how ugly it really was.
(Pride or Shame?)
I understand what Gen. Custer did & if up to me I’d disband 7 Calvary forever in Disgrace.
Yet I know even of the actual history I’m sad that it had to come to that, but that is War!
Chivalry & War are almost impossible to mix.
That’s that familiar look in boys eyes many of us know.
Knowing as I do is the reason I promote the view of a Native American Peace Chief & non-violent solutions first.
I honor what vets were/are called to do, but even more so will hold leadership responsible for their actions of putting those vets/soldiers in those positions in the first place.
My wifes Grand Dad, wounded in action in Italy by German Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_%28United_States%29
I wish I could remember the name of the book, it had a red cover & was written by a guy from that outfit.
In it he detailed what a total Fubar it was there & the senseless slaughter on both sides. Most every War is, a senseless slaughter.
When I was a kid I guess like many kids became sucked into the govt propaganda of glamorizing War.
No more, there are heroic acts of men who serve honorable in War, but there is nothing glamorizing about it or the Wallst Banking/Insurance trash that caused most of it.
Wallst/polecats know those soldiers/family histories better then any of us & that’s why today they are working at a fevered pitch to disarm everyone & destroy our 2nd Amd.
They know there’s something in us Americans that is Beyond Fear!
I respectfully submit.
when i was in in HS ROTC Chief Master Sargent Jarrell would tell of his experience at pearl harbor on dec 7. he said he spent the first part of the attack on the roof of his barracks, running from one parapet to the other trying to keep away from an aircraft that was trying to strafe them while trying to shoot the plane down with 03 springfields.
only story i ever heard him tell about ww2 in the three years i was at school there.
Pete, my Uncle Bob was in the Canal Zone on Dec 7,1941 manning a machine gun on the beach. HIS commander took the war warnings he got,the same ones Kimmel and Short got, seriously and made his position ready. He never did tell me any of the tough parts since he was a grunt in Europe who fought his way into Germany
It must be said that the US military leadership did think the Zone might be hit in a Japanese strike or the Philipines. There were very few who thought the main base at Pearl Harbor would be the target and the majority opinion was that the Japanese would attack Indonesia and Borneo since that is where the oil was.
Adm Yamamoto knew most of the US Navy leaders and had zero respect for them. He said that they were only great country club military men. Unfortunately he was right, but he never met the real leaders who came to the fore such as Nimitz, Fletcher, Spruance, and others who did a great job. King, Leahy, and Halsey were the ones he did know and was not impressed. Which is probably why he figured the attack would succeed.
Randy,
Don’t worry about it. I have read the actual studies from the University of Kent, not the versions filtered through CT blogs and web sites. Billy Mac is misinterpreting facts again, so no surprise there.
What does bother me is the fact he picks this story, and this day, to come and take a dump on Jim’s buddies who never made it out of the flower bed that day. http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt256/otteraylens/Military%20and%20war/HickhamFieldcasualties12-7-1941_zps90254376.jpg?t=1386428081
“Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events.
The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites.
The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority.
Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.”
Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 – a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan – was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/14/whatabout7/
Randyjet, After observing events such as the inside conspiracy to assassinate JFK, Pearl Harbor 9/11 etc. for many years, I’ve moved from mere belief to actual knowledge. You apparently have exposed yourself to only one view of the evidence – that which MSM propagates.
The more one knows, the less certain they are about what they’ve been led to believe is the truth. The PTB aren’t concerned with what you believe – their concern is about what you know.
I see that you offer nothing but psychologists, social scientists, etc for your support, NOT FACTS. That alone tells me you are full of BS. I really liked the 9/11 conspiracy nut who is a theologian as his area of expertise! Of course the engineers and scientists aviation experts mean nothing! So forgive me if I cannot take you seriously since you offer no facts, and the ones you DO offer are simply lies. I guess you missed the killing of Bin Laden in his mansion in Pakistan and he was NOT on dialysis.
You and your fellows are funny in a sad way I suppose. It reminds me of how gullible people can be. Once again, you state you have KNOWLEDGE of the facts, yet offer NONE! The other problem is that what you allege makes NO sense at all and relies on either your ignorance or the ignorance of others to sell this stuff. You also fail to ask simple questions and follow a logical train of thought as to what else MUST happen in order for your hypothesis to work or make sense. So there is a good reason the mainstream view is correct because it is TRUE. Yours on the other hand postulates that YOU are the exalted being who has the true knowledge and the rest of us are sheep. Sorry, but I don’t think you have any qualifications or mental capacity to set yourself up as the superior being you think you are.
My stone is red for the blood they shed
The Medal I bear is my country’s way of showing they care
If I could be seen by all mankind maybe peace will come in my lifetime.
From the face of the dedication stone at the Veterans Cemetery in Springfield, MO.
I was there this past September, I thank you for this story.
i guess if have changed just a bit from that earlier time. now days when we do this to another country we’re told it’s just a limited air strike with no boots on the ground.
bill mcwilliams, Thanks for posting. Whether the events of Pearl Harbor 70 years ago was a disaster or not depends on how much you wanted it to happen. FDR wanted it to happen and did what he could to make it happen. He did not consider it a disaster.
FDR DID consider it a disaster if you would read some real history. I refer you to Murrow’s account of his interview with FDR immediately after the attack. He was outraged, stunned, and frustrated. FDR told Murrow the full extent of the disaster which he considered off the record though FDR did not stipulate that and he kept the secrets.
Those who think that FDR knew before hand of the attack have no logic, knowledge of the facts, and in most cases hate FDR. They basically accuse FDR of treason as President in wartime. They also forget the treason of many of the US military who hated FDR. Case in point is the FACT that opponents of FDR in the Pentagon disclosed US War Plans that were top secret. The only reason The Chicago Tribune was not prosecuted for publishing those plans was that is was done on Dec.6th and FDR had bigger problems. The agreement that Churchill and FDR reached when they declared the Atlantic Charter stipulated a GERMANY first priority if the US got into the war. The US had not come close to re-arming and the extension of the first peacetime draft only passed Congress by ONE VOTE, and that was only preserved by Sam Rayburn closing voting early so that the Reps could not change their votes.
Then one has to ignore the FACT that FDR loved the US Navy and every ship in it. It is absurd to think that he would sacrifice any ships, much less our battleships to let the Japanese start the war. The same thing could have been done by letting the Japanese attack and laying a trap for them. That would have served just as well without the horrendous losses we suffered. Then such critics forget that we only declared war on JAPAN, NOT GERMANY. So the US was NOT at war with Germany at all as a result of the attack, and the Tripartite Pact with Japan did NOT require Germany to go to war with the US since Japan struck first. Indeed FDR had a BIG problem in that US sentiment wanted to get the Japs first, and we had US forces which were being overrun in the Pacific and NOT in Europe. FDR had a fight on his hands in giving military aid to Britain even after Pearl Harbor since it meant less aid for US forces in the Pacific. There is NO logical military or political reason for the disaster at Pearl Harbor other than the gross incompetence of the US military leaders there. The GOP in the last session under W Bush passed a resolution absolving Adm Kimmel for his role in the disaster, thus trying to revise history by partisan political votes. So I have to view such crap as the conspiracy theories as nothing more than political BS.
Speaking of remembering Pearl Harbor:
How about “just a little” Japanese Militarism?
Not going over very well here in Asia, but it just might sell in America, the Land that Forgot Time.
**I don’t like the ancient, yet modern, concept of shooting the messenger,**
Dredd,
It’d be nice to have the more important info in Cliff Note form & Crowd Sourced Action Plans to attempt to correct the flaws.
This current Gatekeeper model of leadership is blocking us all from what has to happen eventually anyway.
After a time of slow deliberation it’s time to implement means to meet the objectives.
“n Day of Deceit, Robert Stinnett delivers the definitive final chapter on America’s greatest secret and our worst military disaster. Drawing on twenty years of research and access to scores of previously classified documents, Stinnett proves that Pearl Harbor was not an accident, a mere failure of American intelligence, or a brilliant Japanese military coup. By showing that ample warning of the attack was on FDR’s desk and, furthermore, that a plan to push Japan into war was initiated at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”
And GWBoosh Cheney were both surprised on 9/11. Not.
Oky1 1, December 7, 2013 at 12:50 pm
“Say what they wish about Jones’ crew …”
===================================
I don’t like the ancient, yet modern, concept of shooting the messenger, so I do not reject any source of information because they are disfavored by Epigovernment.
If what they say sounds out of the bounds of official dogma, convention, and the like, that does not turn off my ears.
Especially when anything those edgers say that challenges the smells of war worship:
Fukushima is one of the altars of the warmonger religion, as are Pearl Harbor and Ground Zero.
But by the same token, if the warmongers make a good case they have my attention.
Some of the allegations of Jones and crew would survive a motion to dismiss from my mind, and some would not.
But we all must thereafter present evidence and carry the relevant and appropriate burden of proof for that particular case.
Thank you – Otteray – for this wonderful, informative detail of a saga and person endearing.
Beautifully done, OS, and look at all the remembrances you and Cousin Jimmy sparked on this thread. It’s a flower bed of memories and tributes.
Say what they wish about Jones’ crew but they do stay glued to reporting the expand tyranny in the world. And the Day of this story is not lost on many of us.
** Fukushima Hysteria in Japan Leads to Fascism
Prison Planet
December 7, 2013
Japanese Senator Shouts “This is The Way the Reign of Terror Begins” … Then Others Physically Restrain Him. **
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fukushima-hysteria-in-japan-leads-to-fascism.html