Read by Tom Parker
There may not be a better book on what happened at Pearl Harbor than Day
of Infamy--and it's not as if the Pearl Harbor story has lacked chroniclers.
Walter Lord is best known for A Night to Remember, his book on the voyage
of the Titanic. Day of Infamy deserves to stand beside that classic as
a gripping narrative, and the subject matter, of course, is infinitely
more important.
Lord begins by showing how Japanese admirals, three months before their
notorious sneak attack, "tested the idea on the game board at the Naval
War College." (It didn't go nearly as well there as it did in real life.)
Then he proceeds briskly through the preparations for the assault and
delivers a minute-by-minute account about those fateful hours in Oahu.
The detail is incredible. The Japanese scan Hawaiian radio stations to
see if their moves have been detected; a U.S. naval officer on "his first
night on his first patrol on his first command" spots a Japanese submarine
just hours before the strike; when the surprise attack finally does arrive,
an excited Japanese commander shouts "Tora! Tora! Tora!" ("Victory!")
before even the first bombs have fallen. The whole assault lasted about
two hours. Thousands of Americans were killed or wounded. The Navy lost
the U.S.S. Arizona, which blew up about 15 minutes into the raid, and
17 other ships were either sunk or crippled. Hundreds of planes were
destroyed or damaged. The Japanese, by contrast, lost only 29 planes.
It must be considered one of the most lopsided battles in all history -
and "battle" probably isn't the best word to describe it. Pearl Harbor
was closer to a massacre. Whatever the label, Pearl Harbor was a turning-
point moment in American history, and it gave rise, the very next day,
to some of the most famous words ever spoken by an American president:
"Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy,
the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked...."
If you intend to read only a single book on Pearl Harbor, this is
the one for you.
Download File Size:475.39 MB
|
