Krag Collectors Association Forum

82 years ago, my parents' world got turned upside down.
Most Americans, still alive from that date, were young children when our country was attacked.

One of thousands.

A cousin on my mom's side of the family (COL G. S. McCullough, commandant of Ft. Mason in San Francisco during the war) always said that Roosevelt knew in advance about PH, and sort of allowed it to play out. This, of course, was heresy at the time - and my cousin was VERY tight-lipped about it, but it is interesting that he was vindicated many years later after more facts emerged. He was a feisty little man, no more than 5-6, or 5-7, but mighty of voice, and I would not have wanted to cross him. He was a competitive pistol shooter, in Army matches, during the 1920s/30s.

By 12/41, FDR had been trying for almost 2 years to get the US into war with Germany. USN attacks on German subs had at least one of our destroyers sunk, USCG capture of German weather & radio stations in Greenland, all long before PH. The IJN attack was an answer to FDR's political problems. The old battleships at PH were close to obsolete. The sailors were worth more dead, for PR value, than alive as sailors.

I was stationed at West Loch (western end of PH) from 12/61 to 5/63. We had 3 Chief Petty Officers who had been sailors at the time of the attack. I heard about the attack from their viewpoints several times. Our barracks had lots of patched up bullet holes.