Hono­lulu after Pearl Harbor: A report published for the first time, 71 years later

[struggle4progress]

By Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Thursday, December 6, 10:47 AM

On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, I was working as a reporter for the Hono­lulu Star-Bulletin. After a week of war, I wrote a story directed at Hawaii’s women; I thought it would be useful for them to know what I had seen. It might help prepare them for what lay ahead. But my editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting for readers and decided not to run my article. It appears here for the first time.

... Like the rest of Hawaii, I refused to believe it. All along the sunny road to town were people just coming out of church, dogs lazy in the driveways, mynas in noisy convention.

Then, from the neighborhood called Punchbowl, I saw a formation of black planes diving straight into the ocean off Pearl Harbor. The blue sky was punctured with anti-aircraft smoke puffs. Suddenly, there was a sharp whistling sound, almost over my shoulder, and below, down on School Street. I saw a rooftop fly into the air like a pasteboard movie set.

For the first time, I felt that numb terror that all of London has known for months. It is the terror of not being able to do anything but fall on your stomach and hope the bomb won’t land on you. It’s the helplessness and terror of sudden visions of a ripping sensation in your back, shrapnel coursing through your chest, total blackness, maybe death ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/honolulu-after-pearl-harbor-a-report-published-for-the-first-time-71-years-later/2012/12/06/e9029986-3d69-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

[SharonAnn]

1. Great article!

[dballance]

2. Wonderful Article, wonderful writing.

What an excellent article. It's so interesting to contrast the times then with the times now. Nothing in that article would be considered too graphic or upsetting now. It's a shame it didn't get run back then because it's such a great telling of news and a story that needed to be told. I think it would have really inspired the "Rosie the Riveters" of the day.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. Elizabeth McIntosh is a remarkable woman.

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2012/?bio=mcintosh

She joined the OSS in 1943. Later she published a book about OSS women's experiences in general. There were some extremely brave, strong and beautiful women in that group. http://www.amazon.com/Sisterhood-Spies-Elizabeth-P-McIntosh/dp/1591145147

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. What an interesting life she had led.

at the bottom of the article, she was in the CIA before it came to be called the CIA..the OSS.

and she wrote
Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the Oss
( found the title on Amazon)

[Myrina]

5. Still applicable today ...

.. for anyone who wonders "why those people hate us?"

"It is the terror of not being able to do anything but fall on your stomach and hope the bomb won’t land on you. It’s the helplessness and terror of sudden visions of a ripping sensation in your back, shrapnel coursing through your chest, total blackness, maybe death ...

I often stop and think when I see AirForce jets doing flyovers at sporting events - we (well, some 'murkans) think it's "cool", but imagine being an Iraqi? An Afghan?They live with the fear McIntosh describes every day.

[babylonsister]

6. Kick! Thanks!! nt

[yurbud]

7. more stories like this would mean fewer wars since they couldn't be glossed over with propaganda

[struggle4progress]

8. You might hope so, but the actual history strongly suggests nobody ever learns a damn thing

The promoters of WWI promised everyone would be home before the 1914 autumn leaves fell

The lies of Vietnam, from the Tonkin Gulf "incident" thru the later systematic misrepresentations exposed by the Pentagon Papers, should have educated a generation of Americans to the endless bullshit of war enthusiasts -- but in fact only a few years passed before the propagandists were pushing a nutso "we were stabbed in the back theory" and revving up brutal bloody proxy wars in Central America and Afghanistan, together with little test invasions (as in Grenada and Panama)

It wasn't that long afterwards that we were back at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Iraq, it was simply astonishing how quickly the entire corporate media fell in line with the rightwing propaganda: the war would be a cakewalk, with its victims showering us with flowers and candy, a glorious enterprise that would pay for itself in liberated oil, guaranteed to be remembered in idyllic ballads that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren would sing about us in future years

It's all so predictable, and yet for some reason many people just can't resist. The Second International were all agreed at Basel, in November 1912, that a great war was coming, and so the membership promised in advance to oppose the war when it broke out -- but when the war did break out, as expected, almost all of them decided that they must become nationalist patriots rather than remain internationalists opposed to the pointless mass slaughter of the European working class, and so the result was that the war brought a very quick end to the Second international, rather than the Second International bringing a very quick end to the war. And thus 9+ million died

[yurbud]

10. with Vietnam, you just need to ask one question to shut up the revisionists:

How exactly would our relationship with them be different today if we had WON?

Would they be making our sneakers for half as much?

[knitter4democracy]

9. My dad was a child and living in Navy housing that day.

He and his sisters were playing outside and wondering at the black things falling out of the sky until the neighbor ran out and hauled them inside and into the basement. He remembered the sounds and then his uncle showing up covered in black oil after diving off the West Virginia and swimming to safety.

Those who lived through it remember and remembered it well.