Pearl Harbor Article Roundup: 74th Anniversary
There were some great articles and content posted over the last few days in the wake of the 74th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Here’s a Pearl Harbor article roundup with links and summaries to some of the best content we found:
The True Story Behind the Most Important Speech of the 20th Century
Paul Sparrow, Director FDR Library, released a rough draft of the original Pearl Harbor address to the nation. The most shocking part of the document was that the line everyone remembers – “a date that will live in infamy” – read a little differently in the first draft of the speech. FDR originally had dictated the line to read, “a date that will live in world history,” but then made the revision after reading the typed dictation he had given his personal assistant.
Read the full story on the FDR Library blog.
After Pearl Harbor: The Haunting WNYC Broadcasts
WNYC was the first station in New York City to broadcast news of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. In their blog post, they issue two pieces of audio of their radio broadcast news bulletins. The first, WNYC’s Pearl Harbor news bulletin. The second, Mayor LaGuardia’s Pearl Harbor address.
Both pieces of audio are representations of how Americans learned of the attack and mourned the loss of more than 2,400 people at Pearl Harbor: by the radio.
U.S. Navy sailor sketched Pearl Harbor attack before he was killed in action
The Atlanta Journal Constitution posted a nice piece on Leonard Franklin Tomlinson, a member of the U.S. Navy with artistic talents. His shipmates paid him to create personal cards for their mothers, wives and girlfriends. Stationed aboard the U.S.S. Helena, the “fighting ship that went in harm’s way,” Tomlinson survived the attack and sent his own image of Pearl Harbor home to his mom.
Just about two years later, the U.S.S. Helena was sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf. Leonard Franklin Tomlinson was declared Missing In Action. Claimed by the sea, he never returned home. But his sketch of Pearl Harbor survives.
Sunken Pearl Harbor Plane Still Filled with Mystery
In June, a team of students from the University of Hawaii were able to take rare images of a PBY-5 Catalina plane that had sunk during the battle of Pearl Harbor.
These images are rare due to the murky water in Pearl Harbor. Previously, there had been many attempts by archaeologists and history enthusiasts to get images of the sunken Pearl Harbor plane. But for decades, none of the attempts by dive teams had produced images of the wreck because of the bay’s cloudy waters.
The new images help piece together the story of a direct casualty from the attack.
We recently came across a website called The Moss Letters, a site dedicated to sharing World War II letters from an American soldier named Harold Grove Moss. In this letters Moss shares his fears, tears and years over the time he served in WWII.
The collection of letters was transcribed by the granddaughter of Harold Moss, with his great grandson putting together the website. The letters are quite the insight into the mindset of a soldier during the era.
Particularly, one letter really stands out. On December 2, 1941, Moss was stationed at Camp Roberts in California. In a letter to his parents, Moss wrote, “Something seemingly a little unusual happened yesterday and that was all the Japanese boys were taken out of our battery.”
Moss didn’t dwell on it, but of course five days later, news of the attack on Pearl Harbor filtered through the ranks and through America.
These letters are definitely worth the read.