By December 1941 negotiations between the United States and
Japan were deadlocked. Japan had allied itself with the Axis powers of Germany
and Italy in 1940 and invaded French-held Indochina in 1941. In response,
Congress had frozen Japanese assets in the U.S. In exchange for ending those sanctions
and withdrawing support for China, the U.S. demanded that Japan leave Indochina.
It was not a tenable compromise for Japan; special envoy Saburo Kurusu
lamented, “If this is the attitude of the American government, I don’t see how
an agreement is possible. Tokyo will throw up its hands at this.”
Negotiations, however, were about to become moot.
At 7:48 a.m. local time on December 7, a low buzzing sound
over the horizon grew into a roar, shattering the peace of Pearl City’s sleepy
Sunday morning. The first of 353 Imperial Japanese fighter planes, launched in
two waves from six aircraft carriers, were about to strafe and bomb naval
assets moored at the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor.
By the end of the day, the statistics would be horrific: all
eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. Three cruisers, three
destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer were either
damaged or sunk. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed
and 1,178 others were wounded.
The attack focused on the ships, leaving most of the base
infrastructure intact, a fact that underscores the purpose of the attack: to
prevent the American Fleet from interfering with Japanese activities in
Southeast Asia. “In the east [Hawaii],” said Admiral Yamamoto, “the American
fleet will be destroyed. The American lines of operation and supplies [to] the
Orient [will] be cut. The enemy forces will be intercepted and annihilated.
Victories will be exploited to break the enemy’s will to fight.”
Americans back home were shocked, but no city felt more
threatened than San Francisco. Though thousands of miles separated Hawaii from
the mainland, many, including the military forces at the Presidio, considered the
City’s exposure to the Pacific an open door.
In the hours and days that followed Pearl Harbor, a rash of alleged
sightings kept tensions high. The Army's Western Defense Command received a
report that a Japanese fleet was 30 miles off the Golden Gate. Every available
soldier at the Presidio of San Francisco began digging slit trenches on the
bluffs facing the ocean, preparing for a possible landing at Baker Beach.
The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called
December 7 the “date which will live in infamy,” and asked Congress for a
Declaration of War. That evening enemy planes were reported heading for San
Francisco. A blackout was ordered, but it didn’t work; the lights stayed on,
even as radio stations and commuter trains went silent. One report circulated
that an enemy aircraft carrier had been spotted off the coast with some
submarines as well. According to one account, one sub very nearly opened fire
on the city with a large caliber gun before the Captain changed his mind. Air
raid alarms went of at least 6 times in the first 24 hours; a half dozen
mysterious flares fell over the city, dropped “presumably from enemy planes,”
the Chronicle said.
The City’s mood became grim; the lights on the Golden Gate
were doused, and the entire waterfront was declared off limits to all but
military personnel. Within weeks, anyone appearing Japanese was stopped and
searched. Though most citizens of California stood by their Japanese American
neighbors, public and Government suspicions about Japanese spies living in the
U.S. allowed xenophobia to prevail.
Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942,
allowing regional military commanders to designate “exclusion zones.” This
power was used to exclude all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast,
including California, most of Oregon, Washington and Arizona. In those states,
the only places they were allowed were inside government camps. Many were
transferred out of state to one of ten War Relocation Authority relocation
centers across seven Midwestern states. The exclusion order effectively
incarcerated, without charges or evidence, approximately 130,000 Japanese and
Japanese-Americans that spring. The Department of Justice also operated eight
detention camps where German-Americans and Italian-American were held alongside
Japanese Americans.
In the early 1980s, Congress responded to the 20-year-long
Redress Movement by issuing a report, ‘Personal Justice Denied,’ condemning the
internment as unjust, motivated by racism and xenophobia rather than factual
military necessity. The Commission recommended that $20,000 in reparations be
paid to those Japanese Americans who had suffered internment. In 1988 President
Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided an additional
$20,000 to each detainee.
Though Pearl Harbor Day has been unofficially recognized
since the end of WWII, in 1994 Congress designated December 7 Pearl Harbor
Remembrance Day to remember and honor those who died. Moreover, it is also a
time to celebrate the long friendship Japan and America have enjoyed since the
end of the war and take stock of the lessons learned. The official Website
observing the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, pearlharbor75thanniversary.com,
advocates the study of history as a way of moving forward: “Understanding past
events and their consequences can inspire reverence for an emotional commitment
to peaceful solutions to conflict. How do we help future generations chart
their way toward peace and prosperity? We can learn from the past.”
Every year since 1964, Pearl Harbor survivors and their
families have remembered Pearl Harbor by relighting the beacon atop Mt. Diablo.
The light was originally erected in 1928 by Standard Oil, but was extinguished
in 1941 as part of the general blackout issued by the Western Defense Command. The
Sons & Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors this year co-sponsor the 52nd
annual relighting with Save Mount Diablo and invite the public to attend the
ceremony, which is held at the Concord Campus of Cal State East Bay, where
guests can view via live feed the relighting. The beacon will shine all night
this one evening in the year.
Pearl Harbor Day Beacon Lighting Ceremony
Wednesday, Dec 7, 2016
3:45 p.m
Oak Room of the Library
Cal State East Bay Concord Campus
4700 Ygnacio Valley Rd, Concord
Free, but parking fee may apply
CSUEB Concord parking (510) 885-3790
Save Mt. Diablo office (925) 947-3535
http://www.savemountdiablo.org/activities_events_beacon.html
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