This Week on the Internet

As Americans ponder President Barack Obama’s strategy in sending up to another 35000 troops to Afghanistan, we should pause to remember Pearl Harbor.

The surprise was complete. The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan.

Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships

The late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt captured the American sentiment after Pearl Harbor in his famous declaration of war speech in which he called Dec. 7, 1941: “A date that will live in infamy.”

Poster commemorating the attack, 1942

Pearl Harbor