Today I ditched the kids and ran off with Liz and Andrew to see Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial.
Our capt. made that uniform look good!
"Lindrew" in front of the Missouri.
The bizarre part of the afternoon came when I looked up at the wall of men who had died in the Arizona and found the name WG Pitcher. That would be Walter Giles Pitcher, a gunmen 2nd class of Long Beach, CA. My great grand father was Walter Pitcher and I have a gaggle of great uncles, cousins and second cousins with the name Walter Pitcher. I have never heard about this particular relation but I am sure there is a connection. How interesting it was to watch myself suddenly become interested in this part of history with a glance at a list of names. I will have to get back to you with any details.
A couple of things I did not know about Pearl Harbor was just the day before 35 pairs of brothers were transferred to be together on the Arizona. 27 sets of brothers were kill. You can see the two Pike brothers listed above. Another interesting point was the logic behind having the entire Navel fleet parked right next to each other in the middle of all the US air planes. The general in charge thought the greatest threat was Japanese sabotage sneaking in from off the street. It was easier to keep watch on the riff raff if the battleships were tightly packed together. Also the radar picked up 50 airplanes on their approach but the operator dismissed it as being US planes returning from training. It was a day to live in infamy.
2 comments:
Wow. I wonder why they haven't done a movie on the brothers that died on that ship. That's tragic. I think America would have a mass depression attack and never recover after seeing that movie.
I think that is why the made Saving Private Ryan. He was the last brother of a family of boys in the Army who was still alive. I never actually saw the movie. Then they completely wasted the Pearl Harbor theme on a Love Boat plot. But a new movie could only be better than either WWII films.
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