Pearl Harbor 75th anniversary

You might miss it just glancing at the Star Advertiser website, but today the paper has put out a special Pearl Harbor 75th Anniversary Commemorative edition.  You can buy the paper copy for $1.00.  But some (or all? -- I assume it's all in the print replica) of it is online too (for subscribers).

Here's (the beginning of) the cover story.

Oahu was an impregnable fortress.

Japan wouldn’t dare attack the United States, a first-rate nation, and its Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Possibly elsewhere, such as in the Philippines, but certainly not Hawaii.

That was the American mindset — until just before 8 a.m. Dec. 7, 1941.

From the lowest-ranking American defenders who fought back — some still in their teens, and some firing with .45-caliber pistols and Springfield bolt-action rifles — to the Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the Japanese air and submarine attack was a stunning surprise that caught U.S. forces flat-footed.

On the battleship USS Nevada, the band literally played on as bombs fell, so confused were crew members initially as to what was going on.

Kimmel, in his Pearl Harbor headquarters, was surveying the destruction befalling his fleet, and the death that accompanied it, when a bullet crashed through the window and bounced off his chest. Examining it, he remarked, “It would have been merciful had it killed me.”

In the attacks that lasted just over two hours, 2,390 American service members and Oahu civilians were killed; 21 ships of the Pacific Fleet, including eight battleships, were sunk or damaged; and 164 aircraft were destroyed.  Fifty-six Japanese aviators and up to nine midget submarine crew members died.

Seventy-five years later Pearl Harbor continues to intrigue and mesmerize a nation unused to fighting wars at home.