Day of Infamy Quotes

“As the shooting crackled all over Oahu, sooner or later someone was bound to get hurt. An elderly Japanese fisherman, Sutematsu Kida, his son Kiichi, and two others were killed by a patrol plane as their sampan passed Barbers Point, returning with the day’s catch. They had gone out before the attack and probably never knew there was a war. In Pearl Harbor itself, a machine gun on the California accidentally cut down two Utah survivors while they stood on the deck of the Argonne during one of the false alarms.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“All kinds of people went through the line. Navy wife Maureen Hayter was shocked when offered a swig of Old Grand Dad afterward — it just didn’t seem right. Another woman was a well-known prostitute. She couldn’t give blood but wanted to do something. Dr. Devereux put her to work cleaning bottles and tubes. She turned out to be his most faithful volunteer.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A local committee, called the Major Disaster Council, had spent months preparing for this kind of day; now their foresight was paying off. Forty-five trucks belonging to American Sanitary Laundry, New Fair Dairy, and other local companies sped off to Hickam as converted ambulances. Dr. Forrest Pinkerton dashed to the Hawaii Electric Company’s refrigerator, collected the plasma stored there by the Chamber of Commerce’s Blood Bank. He piled it in the back of his car, distributed it to various hospitals, then rushed on the air, appealing for more donors. Over 500 appeared within an hour, swamping Dr. John Devereux and his three assistants. They took the blood as fast as they could, ran out of containers, used sterilized Coca-Cola bottles.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“The civilians considered themselves in the front lines anyhow. Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, joined a group of men digging slit trenches along the shore.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“But careful investigation by ordnance experts revealed that antiaircraft shells caused every one of the 40 explosions in Honolulu, except for one blast near the Hawaiian Electrical Company’s powerhouse.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“In they hurtled — Lieutenant Commander Takahashi’s 27 dive-bombers plunging toward Ford Island and Hickam …. Lieutenant Commander Murata’s 40 torpedo planes swinging into position for their run at the big ships. Commander Fuchida marked time off Barbers Point with the horizontal bombers, watching his men go in. They were all attacking together instead of in stages as originally planned, but it would apparently make no difference — the ships were sitting ducks. A few minutes earlier, at 7:49 A.M., Fuchida had radioed the signal to attack: “To … to … to … to …” Now he was so sure of victory that at 7:53 — even before the first bomb fell — he signaled the carriers that the surprise attack was successful: “Tora … tora … tora …”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Five miles farther up the coast lay the Kaneohe Naval Air Station, the only other post on the windward side of Oahu. Thirty-three of the Navy’s new PBYs operated out of here. This morning three of them were out on patrol. The others were in the hangars or riding at anchor in the choppy blue water of Kaneohe Bay.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Bellows was a small Army fighter base near the eastern end of Oahu. It had only two small squadrons, and only 12 of the planes were modern P-40s, but all of them were lined up just as neatly as the planes at Hickam and Wheeler. The men were all taking it easy or planning the usual Sunday projects.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“General Short’s sabotage alert was in full force, and obviously the best way to guard the planes was to group them together, out in the open. So there they all were — or at least all that mattered, for only six of the B-17s could fly … only six of the 12 A-20s… and only 17 of the 33 outmoded B-18s.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Doris Miller, a huge mess attendant on the West Virginia, was one of the regulars faced with this problem of reconciling the old with the new. Every morning he had the colossal job of waking up Ensign Edmond Jacoby, a young reservist from the University of Wichita. At first Miller used to yank at Jacoby, much like a Pullman porter arousing a passenger. This was fine with Jacoby, but an Annapolis man reminded Miller that an enlisted man must never touch an officer. Faced with the problem of upholding an ensign’s dignity and still getting Jacoby up, Miller appeared the following morning with a brilliant solution. Standing three inches from Jacoby’s ear, he yelled, “Hey, Jake!” and fled the room.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“The large and the small, the mighty and the meek, they all added up to 96 warships in Pearl Harbor this Sunday morning.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“The time had come to deploy for the attack, and Commander Fuchida had a difficult decision to make. The plan provided for either “Surprise” or “Surprise Lost” conditions. If “Surprise,” the torpedo planes were to go in first, then the horizontal bombers, finally the dive-bombers, while the fighters remained above for protection. (The idea was to drop as many torpedoes as possible before the smoke from the dive-bombing ruined the targets.) On the other hand, if the raiders had been detected and it was “Surprise Lost,” the dive-bombers and fighters would hit the airfields and antiaircraft defenses first; then the torpedo planes would come in when resistance was crushed. To tell the planes which deployment to take, Commander Fuchida was to fire his signal gun once for “Surprise,” twice for “Surprise Lost.” Trouble was, Commander Fuchida didn’t know whether the Americans had caught on or not. The reconnaissance planes were meant to tell him, but they hadn’t reported yet. It was now 7:40 A.M., and he couldn’t wait any longer. They were already well down the west coast and about opposite Haleiwa. Playing a hunch, he decided he could carry off the surprise. He held out his signal pistol and fired one “black dragon.” The dive-bombers began circling upward to 12,000 feet; the horizontal bombers spiraled down to 3500; the torpedo planes dropped until they barely skimmed the sea, ready for the honor of leading the assault. As the planes orbited into position, Fuchida noticed that the fighters weren’t responding at all. He decided that they must have missed his signal, so he reached out and fired another “black dragon.” The fighters saw it this time, but so did the dive-bombers. They decided it was the second “black dragon” of the “Surprise Lost” signal. Hence, they would be the ones to go in first. In a welter of confusion, the High Command’s plan for carefully integrated phases vanished; dive-bombers and torpedo planes eagerly prepared to slam into Pearl Harbor at the same time.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“The deceptive measures obviously were working. And Tokyo must have felt quite self-satisfied, for everything possible had been done. The authorities had even brought busloads of sailors from the Yokosuka Naval Barracks and paraded them conspicuously all over town on sight-seeing tours. At 1:20 A.M. a last message was relayed by Tokyo from Honolulu: “December 6 (Local Time) Vessels moored in Harbor: 9 Battleships; 3 Class-B Cruisers; 3 Seaplane Tenders; 17 Destroyers. Entering Harbor are 4 Class-B Cruisers; 3 Destroyers. All Aircraft Carriers and Heavy Cruisers have departed Harbor … No indication of any changes in U.S. Fleet or anything else unusual.” More regrets that the carriers were gone. Some even wondered whether the raid should be called off. But Admiral Nagumo felt there was no turning back now. Eight battleships were bound to be in port, and it was time to stop worrying “about carriers that are not there.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“On the flagship, Admiral Nagumo worried more than ever about being discovered. He was indeed in a ticklish spot. If sighted by the enemy at any time before December 6, he was to turn around and go home. If sighted on the 6th, he was to use his own judgment. Only on the 7th was he committed, no matter what happened.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“On December 2 this sort of bull session ended abruptly. The day before, the imperial council had decided on war, and now Admiral Yamamoto radioed the task force: “Climb Mount Niitaka.” It was code for “Proceed with the attack.” Another message later that day confirmed the date: “X-Day will be 8 December” — which was, of course, Sunday, December 7, in Hawaii.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“In Honolulu, Lieutenant Commander Suzuki spent a busy week. From occasional visitors to his ship he learned that the fleet wasn’t now assembling at Lahaina Anchorage as it used to. He confirmed that the weekend was a universally observed American institution. He picked up some choice titbits — structural data on the Hickam Field hangars, interesting aerial shots of Pearl Harbor taken October 21. These were made from a private plane that took up sightseers at nearby John Rogers Airport. Anybody could do it.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“Thirty-three-year-old Suguru Suzuki, youngest lieutenant commander in the service, had a more stimulating job. Around the end of October he boarded the Japanese liner Taiyo Maru for an interesting journey to Honolulu. Instead of following her usual course, the ship sailed far to the north, crossed over between Midway and the Aleutians, and then cut south to Hawaii —exactly the course the task force planned to follow to avoid detection.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“The men practiced harder than ever —mostly the low, short torpedo runs that had to be mastered. The torpedoes themselves continued to misbehave in shallow water, diving to the bottom and sticking in the mud. Commander Fuchida wondered whether they would ever work. But Genda only grew more excited — once perfected, they would be the supreme weapon. And by early November he had succeeded. Simple wooden stabilizers were fitted on the fins, which would keep the torpedoes from hitting even the shallow 45-foot bottom of Pearl Harbor.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“To free Kimmel’s hands, defense of the base was left to the Army and to the Fourteenth Naval District, technically under Kimmel but run by Admiral Claude C. Bloch pretty much as his own show. Local defense seemed fairly academic anyhow. Only a week before, when Admiral Kimmel asked his operations officer, Captain Charles McMorris, what the chances were of a surprise attack on Honolulu, the captain firmly replied, “None.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy

“To General Short, Washington’s warning had posed one overwhelming danger — an uprising by Hawaii’s 157,905 civilians of Japanese blood, which would coincide with any Tokyo move in the Far East. He immediately alerted his command against sabotage; lined up all his planes neatly on the ramps, where they could be more easily guarded; and notified the War Department. Washington seemed satisfied, but the fear of a Japanese Fifth Column lingered — that was the way the Axis always struck.”
― Walter Lord, Day of Infamy